i’ve been trying to get rid of non-foss garbage as much as possible but i haven’t found anything to replace the microsoft launcher yet, a few good candidates but they were all either underbaked or too unstable to use. Any suggestions?
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Lawnchair has done the trick since I switched from Nova
I’ve been eyeing lawn chair to replace my nova setup for a while but neither aurora/play-store nor F-droid have the newest release, is there a repo/manager to download from that doesn’t involve manually going to the GitHub and installing it?
Check out Obtanium
Check this site and you can go through all available android launchers.
https://grabster.notion.site/6671f3b62d8043c4aaaae22a241e3f05?v=91d9b664887643298f85fe18044d3560
I’ve never heard of Microsoft Launcher before… A lot of people seem to like Nova Launcher, I’ve used Lawnchair in the past, but nowadays I just don’t care anymore, I use the Pixel default. I try to use as little Google stuff as possible, but the launcher is hassle free.
im on oneplus and i hate default launcher. nova launcher does not seem to be open source
I’ve run the Microsoft launcher for a short while, until I did network analysis on my phone and found out every single tap on the launcher sent data to Microsoft. From dragging through the app list to holding a finger down for the settings, everything launched analytics.
I kicked that stuff out the moment I found out. Kind of sad, the launcher itself wasn’t half bad. It had some interesting design choices that I haven’t seen elsewhere.
I switched from Nova to Kvaesitso when I found out they were owned by a spyware corp. It takes a little getting used to as it does most things differently, but it’s actually good once you get past that.
I still use Nova, however, I use AFWall+ to deny internet access to it. As well, as give it as little permissions as necessary.
I really wanted to like the ms launcher. very customizable, and frankly it is kind of awesome. but I didn’t stick with it. I was using oneui for years when I started shopping for launchers, and I landed on kiss.
LineageOS’s launcher has some forks that are usable on normal ROMs, I think.
There’s also the Lawnchair launcher (https://lawnchair.app/) if you want something to download straight from the Play Store. I think Lawnchair 2 is in beta, but it’s looking pretty stock pixel-y. The old lawnchair should be pretty stable.
Not every phone vendor bothers to implement support for alternative launchers well, especially in Android 14 and later, so there’s a chance your options may be restricted by your phone’s vendor.
I’ve been using lawnchair for such a long time, but one gripe I have is that it seems to be in a perpetual state of “Pre-release” with large gaps between releases.
Last time I used it, it just worked. I don’t really need updates for my launcher, unless they’re bugfixes.
I guess it’s not very good if you want a featureful launcher, it’s kind of minimalist and basic. I used to use Nova as my complicated launcher, but these days I don’t know what I’d pick if my built in launcher isn’t up to the task anymore.
