Hello Nova Community, I’m Kevin Barry, the creator of Nova Launcher. I’ve made, make and will continue to make Nova Launcher. Today I’m announcing that Branch has acquired Nova Launcher, and hired myself and Cliff Wade (Nova Community Manager). Branch has also acquired Sesame Search and hired the Sesame Crew (Steve Blackwell and Phil Wall). I’ll continue to control the direction and development of Nova Launcher, and that direction is unchanged. Nova focuses on power users and customization. I will be adding some features powered by Branch, they’ll be optional like most features in Nova.
This is a tough pill to swallow. I’ve been a dedicated Nova user since… I honestly can’t even remember, and to me, Nova equals Android, and it’s always been clear Nova thoroughly and truly understood what demanding Android users were looking for. I have really never used any other launcher, and it’s the first application I install on all my Android devices. Seeing this vital application bought up by a mobile analytics form of all things is gut-wrenching.
Several decades covering this industry have taught me that acquisitions like this pretty much exclusively mean doom, and usually signal a slow but steady decline in quality and corresponding increase in user-hostile features. I’m always open to being proven wrong, but I don’t have a lot of hope.
In any event, I guess it’s time to find another launcher.
Unfortunately, you won’t be proven wrong. Think about it. Why would an analytics firm buy a launcher developer, if not to have its legalized spyware creep into the existing product?
So, here we have another app to download the apk of, and not to update anymore.
The funny thing is, the app does not even need to be sold, but just have ad service or even analytics agreements with the wrong provider.
This was “Muslim Pro”, which had a paid subscription model, but still somehow managed to sell data, albeit unknowingly.
The problem is very common even outside of digital domain. The beloved Toys’R’Us stores, for example was bought by private capital on “margin” (leveraged buyout), and converted into a cash milking machine, instead of investing on new technologies, or competing with the Internet stores (Best Buy and Target, for a contrast, are still doing fine after several big internal changes).
Basically you have something valuable (an app, or a youtube channel with followers, or a retail chain), and can’t “extract” enough money. Someone comes along with a bag of cash, and buys the “customers”. Sad, but this is how it happens.
Try Lawnchair. It’s open source, and somehow it manages to feel light while having a long list of features.
Lawnchair here on most of my devices. Although I have Quickstep on my Pixel 6 (default with CalyxOS) and didn’t even know it….
Ah, you’ve beat me to it, was going to reccommend Lawnchair. So far I’ve found it has all the features that I would ever use Nova for (though I also used Sesame paired with Nova, but since Sesame was bought by Branch as well, that’s uninstalled as well)
Also truth be told, as a long time user of Nova, it’s been getting rather buggy for me. I can tap on an icon on my home screen after closing another app and it will choose an app that I didn’t want. Not to mention the lag is getting worse. Lawnchair has been speedy for me and I don’t have to pay for extra features.
Unfortunately Lawnchair launcher isnt updated in 2 years, just like Zim Launcher (which is based on Lawnchair). Openlauncher seems a bit more updated (januari 2021). So might be time for another fork? 😉
Launchair 12.1.0 Alpha 3 was released on May 19, 2022.
https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair/releases
I kinda get the impression that the “alpha” release is kinda like the nightly builds for Haiku… Sure, you can get the “stable” branch that’s many years old, but really anyone who really uses it gets the latest “unstable” release and it works just fine.
Anyway I’ve been using the “alpha” for over a year and have had a great experience with it. It replaced Nova for me. 🙂
KISS Launcher! Does what it says.
Ugh. Here we go again. Let us just hope it doesn’t go the way it usually does. 🙁 I bought Nova Launcher Prime some years back. Always enjoyed it.
But on the plus side, given the peanuts it cost, you got your money’s worth.
Makes sense to sell. The Dev gets a pocket full of cash and guaranteed ongoing employment without having to live hand to mouth and at risk of his app getting randomly blocked and revenue drying up. So they sell to those with a bag of cash who invariably earn money through selling data.
The “community” seems to have no form of crowdfunded buy out for Devs like this. Why is that?
“The “community” seems to have no form of crowdfunded buy out for Devs like this. Why is tht?”
Doesn’t it? Apart from the lifetime license, the community was never offered the option for any of the well established other funding options, crowd or otherwise.
So that given that you will soon get a crapware wrapped as the product that you’ve paid for the license is not exactly lifetime, unless it means lifetime of the some guy as an independent dev.
The worse thing is that you’d soon not even be able to get the old product w/o “value added updates” for new devices easily.
A licence is a licence to use the software. Not to buy the company.
In buying a lifetime licence you weren’t also issued shares in Nova. I’ve not heard of a community buy out of an a OSS company in tech (seen it in football clubs where fans buy the club) does such a mechanism even exist?
Example of a community buyout: blender3d
I didn’t know about this. Thank you!
Yes we did, stop lying. Everyone in the “community” have always been able to buy the “prime” version of the launcher for a few bucks. That’s the price tag the developer chose to put on himself on the free market. And now he opted to go for a quick pay out.
That pretty much summarizes what the “community” bs means for non OSS products.
In any case, “communities” are just cults with a twist.
It’s not lying. It’s the point I’m making. Yes the OSS community can support a product by buying a licence. But it has no mechanism to buy it as a company, or become a shareholder in in and in doing so renumerate the creator(s). Let’s say this guy sold his business for £1m (to have a number), how could he have achieved a buyout Without “selling out” to a ad company or similar?