Nova Launcher is no longer a launcher with ads. It's now spyware and adware with a side serving of launcher. Anyone who continues to use it is either uninformed or an idiot.
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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Android
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Thanks.
It's pretty popular with GrapheneOS users because on GrapheneOS, you can install any app entirely without network permission, or disable the permission afterwards. It might be my favorite feature of GrapheneOS.
I personally use Lawnchair, and while I really like it, it has one big flaw - app drawer folders. It does have them, but you have to create and manage them in settings and it's really slow and annoying. I have around 260 apps, and sorting them this way would be almost impossible.
I was looking into other launchers, including Nova, but then I found JINA. It's an app drawer, not a launcher, and it has tons of features - nested folders, tags, filters... No in-app purchases or ads, even though it's not FOSS. It's ugly, but exactly what I needed.
And now the best part: Lawnchair has an option to open an app on the swipe up gesture instead of opening the drawer. That way I replaced it's drawer with JINA without switching to another launcher like Nova.
blocking network per app is also possible on lineageos
cool!
I disabled updates on Nova for the time being but I really need to setup and install a new launcher
We already know it went to shit, I'm sure everyone here and on Reddit already moved over to another launcher or stuck to the last good release for the time being. I think that's enough Nova Launcher news.
I don't even see what it's appeal is, it looks like any other launcher. Why do y'all care so much?
I switched away from it only recently. There is nothing else that is as customizable, intuitive, and polished. My app drawer was organized with different pages. I used most of the built in gestures. When using an icon pack, it automatically rethemed the missing icons to a color scheme that matched. I use octopi now and I have had to download other apps to get a closer experience to what I was used to.
I've tried most of the other suggested launchers but they feel clunky or take longer to find what I need. It also takes a long time to tinker with a new launcher. I think it's taken a few weeks for me to find something that works well enough and I still hope that Nova gets an open source fork.