Niagara.

I suppose it depends on your requirements. I tried a lot and, finally, Pear fitted the bill. I was happy enough with it to get the Pro version and haven’t looked back since.

Nova is now owned by an analytics company. You can probably guess why.

Today I’d only trust open source launchers. The default Trebuchet is fine. Lawnchair is alright too.

I landed on Nova back in 2013 because it allowed me to assign secondary app shortcuts to icons on my dock that are accessed by swipe-up gestures. My hotbar has:

• phone, but swipe up for contacts
• messages, but swipe up for Gmail
• music player, but swipe up for YouTube
• Firefox, but swipe up for clock app

Haven’t paid any attention to any newer launchers.

AIO is pretty interesting so far, I just paid for it and i never so that.

Check out this reply on the GrapheneOS forum: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/3780-launcher/10

My favourite open source launcher is Lawnchair, and proprietary is DNA Launcher.

Kvaesitso, it’s unique and open source

Niagara launcher

It’s a minimalistic approach, you get one widget at the top of the screen and then a handful of favourite apps.

There’s no app draw instead you scroll an alphabet on either side of the screen to find apps.

Works really well if you have a lot of apps and you want to find them by name.

In the paid version you can have multiple widgets but they stack in the one spot and you have to swipe between them.

It’s perfect if you want an uncluttered launcher.

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1. Nova Launcher
2. Lawnchair

Niagara Launcher if you want a very minimalistic experience. It’s not open-source, but there are other open-source, minimalistic options like mLauncher, Olauncher, Focus Launcher and Lunar Launcher. I have also seen people recommend Kvaesito. Lawnchair if you prefer a more traditional Android launcher.

Nova is solid, still my go to after trying plenty of others.

Sadly, none.

I’ve tried many over the years (15 years now!), and while some do work “better” than stock, there aren’t really any that use a different paradigm or concept (Maybe Square Home by chyk).

I don’t find the home screen/desktop concept to be very useful (same with computers). I get the idea, and it should be very useful - it just isn’t, to me🤷🏼

The number one thing I do is switch apps - so for years I used Simple Task Switcher as my launcher, because it was way faster than the native Switcher, and it provided screens for favorites and shortcuts.

Fortunately the Android app switcher has finally caught up and become quick and sensible (and unfortunately Simple Task Switcher no longer works due to changes). I do like the task switcher today.

The other problem with the home screen is the delay implemented in Android when you go home, which I find really annoying. This was intentional (not sure why, maybe because way back on early phones it gave the system time to render some stuff). It’s still there, and not because my phone is slow - even a brand new Pixel with no apps or Google account has this delay. It takes nearly 2 seconds to go home - long enough to make me question if I hit the home button.

I don’t know what the answer is - I keep looking for a new/different way to have a home screen that’s more useful, but they all present the same paradigm (although with different/better features, such as Lawnchair and Nova).

The only reason I go home is to open the app drawer (I find apps on the home screen chaotic - it would take me longer to find an app there than in an alpha list).

Jina Drawer is something I’ve toyed with that has a different approach, though it’s not a launcher.

Lawnchair 2 from F-Droid.

Because it’s pretty and it has plenty of customization features if you like the android stock launcher.