> Personal Data collected: Cookies, unique device identifiers, Usage Data and IDs (package names) from installed apps.
It sends a unique device identifier, your IP address and your app usage to Firebase. I understand why the developer would want crash reports but he gathers a lot of data on users.
Niagara Launcher dev here - that's a valid concern, especially since launcher apps have access to a lot of personal data.
We have created a document that outlines why we collect the data we do: https://help.niagaralauncher.app/article/109-privacy-policy-....
In short, we only collect data to power our features, verify if the user owns our premium version, improve our app, and for public research and statistics.
If you have questions about specific pieces of data or anything else, please feel free to ask.
I believe in the good intentions of you and the team, but my advice here is to build a data management and retention process to be future proof.
What it means is you create a policy of non-ad-value data collection and very short identifiable data retention to avoid a future change of hearts (maybe you get big and acquired, maybe you bring a Zuckerberg to the team...who knows).
By doing this you not only protect the users data but you help the community trust your good intentions.
Seeing there is no business model (or did I miss that?), how likely is it that this app is sending installed app lists to 3rd party for appstore analytics like Data.ai and similar services? Something needs to pay the bills?
Rest assured, we don't sell your data. We're a small indie team solely financed by Niagara Pro, our in-app upgrade. I'm forever thankful to our community that it is enough to pay the bills and to develop the app further.
I really appreciate how Android made the “graphical shell” a user-replaceable component of the OS.
Back in the day, I used Nova Launcher and an icon pack to completely re-theme my home screen. I felt so cool.
I encourage anyone curious to take a look at the following subreddit for some neat themes that users have created for themselves over the years using custom launchers: https://www.reddit.com/r/androidthemes/top/?t=all
Do you have any recommendations for launchers to check out? I don’t daily drive Android but keep a couple devices on that side of the fence around for dev purposes and have been underwhelmed with the options I’ve tried so far. I was expecting something more like the old Windows alternative shells (which could differ radically from Explorer) but third party Android launchers don’t seem all that different from what devices come with and overall kind of samey, either being app grids or lists.
I've used Nova for maybe a decade at this point. For me it's the best, hands down. I gladly paid for the premium version.
I have a super minimal and frictionless gesture-based interface going. No app clutter clogging up the screen at all.
Everything I need to do is executed by a one or two finger gesture, no scrolling to find apps and nothing obscuring a nice wallpaper that automatically rotates daily (using Tasker).
Email? Slide one finger up.
Messages? One finger down.
Calendar? Two fingers up.
Phone dialer? Two fingers down.
Maps? Double tap anywhere. Etc.
IMO it was really easy to set up and probably actually keeps me off my phone more than I would be otherwise. If it didn't exist it would be the launcher I'd build for myself.
If you are like me and want a super tranquil "phone-flow" I would highly recommend getting Nova and using the gestures feature.
I spent a long time after Windows Phone died trying to find an Android launcher that felt as clean and intuitive, and I failed. Microsoft did, however, release their own launcher which for me has proven to be the least sucking of the closed source options. I don't use any of the social features or other widgets, but I do clean everything off the home screen (including the dock) and just have a handful of large icons clustered along the sides where they are easy for me to reach. Combine with a nice icon pack and you can get a pretty minimal desktop. Swipe to get to the app drawer. It's still fundamentally a grid, though.
I used to love LawnChair (also, best name), because it was simple and functional. Then it wasn't updated any longer, and at some point broke some Widgets. R.I.P.
After much searching, I've settled on Hyperion instead.
Essentially, I want the Google Launcher without the Google Search Bar. And maybe a slightly denser icon spacing. Hyperion does that trick, even with the free version. But, to stave off another LawnChair situation, I decided to give them a subscription regardless, just so it stays around.
Big coincidence, I just switched to Niagara, complaint: too much scrolling, no auto updates.
I like it better than Oasis (which I might be confusing for something else), complaint: too minimal.
My go to for years was Square Home, great until last years' reinstall, then something (I forget), which was prob a combination of my fault and Android whatever it's on now (maybe 11).
My only other (notable) like is Smart Launcher, which is honestly great except for all the "cloud integration" stuff.
This a good place to plug my favorite launcher? Search-based launchers in general are something I just cannot live without nowadays, there's way less friction there with openint apps and such.
Kvæsitso is the one I use currently: https://kvaesitso.mm20.de/. The design is really good, and the widget support is nice. Search is not as perfect ass the classic KISS, though: http://kisslauncher.com/.
I keep downloading this hoping I can switch from Microsoft Launcher to an open source solution, and every single time I get stuck because I can't find out how to add apps on the home screen. I've looked through all the docs and they all say stuff like "scroll to the bottom of the widget list and add favorites", and yet... there is no widget list. Long press doesn't do anything. Hamburger button only gives me launcher settings (where there is no widget list). Searching for "widget" shows no results, so even if I embrace the search concept it doesn't do what I expect. The clock is pretty, though.
That's a bit too streamlined for me. I don't group apps by their first letter, I group them by purpose of convenience. I need a lot more than maybe ten favorites on screen and having to scroll or go into a menu to find anything beyond that is just a waste of time. Yes, there are folders but other than with Nova Launcher you can't see which apps are in there unless you open one. I like being able to see a notification bubble on an app within a folder. The concept is slick but it doesn't match my usage pattern at all.
I guess the design of the launcher is meant to make you more intentional about using your phone by adding friction. Reduced notifications, smaller selection of favorite apps to choose from, and search for everything else. And it's not on the extreme end of inconvenience for search-oriented launchers.
I've been using Niagara since its first days. Absolutely loving it and it keeps getting better year over year.
The only thing I miss still is not being able to open drawer by swiping up (though fastscroll on letters is good enough, but kinda sucks that it only handles latin letters there, cuz like 3rd of my apps are in Cyrillic and thus stuck at the first category).
UX on foldable device is unmatched, especially after it added support for side-to-side widgets and widget stacking.
Another slight annoyance is that in modern android quickstep is no longer standard part of AOSP, and depends on how OEM implemented it, which means that on many devices (including mine mix fold 2) you either lose access to gesture navigation in order to use Niagara(I get around it by using Infinite Gestures + OMS overlay to hide the navbar) or get broken animations when swapping between apps and going home.
UPD: it also recently got client-side implementation of monet and built-in contextual variable icons, which works even on devices that don't have it as a part of AOSP. It works marvels and I can't get enough of how good it looks.
And in general, I wish more launchers had fastscroller as overlay option, so that you can get to any app via tapping/flicking onto a letter in a single tap/swipe. Once you experienced it, it's hard to go back to the app grid.
Running it for a few years. Very good! Helps you focus on what matters, easy to tweak and fork. Replacing the default OnePlus launcher make me gain a bit more performance as well, especially switching accounts on the phone! Plus I suspect some battery as well.
If you search for launchers in F-Droid, regular ones are largely nonexistent / unmaintained (Neolauncher has some repo activity, but the last actual release is from two years ago).
Instead you'll find it's full of lazy KISS clones that brag about the "minimalism" and "productivity" of search-based launchers... I'm sure that has nothing to do with those being much, much easier to code than ordinary graphical launchers :/
Kvaesitso is the exception, and the one I currently use - it's technically search-based, but it can add enough icons and widgets to the homepage so that during everyday use you don't actually need to type the names of your apps like a caveman.
After being stabbed in the back so many times by non-FOSS software I find it hard to trust companies that promote that kind of dependent relationship. I gladly pay to support free software that I heavily rely on like an Android launcher.
Readit News
> Personal Data collected: Cookies, unique device identifiers, Usage Data and IDs (package names) from installed apps.
It sends a unique device identifier, your IP address and your app usage to Firebase. I understand why the developer would want crash reports but he gathers a lot of data on users.
What it means is you create a policy of non-ad-value data collection and very short identifiable data retention to avoid a future change of hearts (maybe you get big and acquired, maybe you bring a Zuckerberg to the team...who knows).
By doing this you not only protect the users data but you help the community trust your good intentions.
Back in the day, I used Nova Launcher and an icon pack to completely re-theme my home screen. I felt so cool.
I encourage anyone curious to take a look at the following subreddit for some neat themes that users have created for themselves over the years using custom launchers: https://www.reddit.com/r/androidthemes/top/?t=all
I have a super minimal and frictionless gesture-based interface going. No app clutter clogging up the screen at all. Everything I need to do is executed by a one or two finger gesture, no scrolling to find apps and nothing obscuring a nice wallpaper that automatically rotates daily (using Tasker). Email? Slide one finger up. Messages? One finger down. Calendar? Two fingers up. Phone dialer? Two fingers down. Maps? Double tap anywhere. Etc.
IMO it was really easy to set up and probably actually keeps me off my phone more than I would be otherwise. If it didn't exist it would be the launcher I'd build for myself.
If you are like me and want a super tranquil "phone-flow" I would highly recommend getting Nova and using the gestures feature.
After much searching, I've settled on Hyperion instead.
Essentially, I want the Google Launcher without the Google Search Bar. And maybe a slightly denser icon spacing. Hyperion does that trick, even with the free version. But, to stave off another LawnChair situation, I decided to give them a subscription regardless, just so it stays around.
I like it better than Oasis (which I might be confusing for something else), complaint: too minimal.
My go to for years was Square Home, great until last years' reinstall, then something (I forget), which was prob a combination of my fault and Android whatever it's on now (maybe 11).
My only other (notable) like is Smart Launcher, which is honestly great except for all the "cloud integration" stuff.
Kvæsitso is the one I use currently: https://kvaesitso.mm20.de/. The design is really good, and the widget support is nice. Search is not as perfect ass the classic KISS, though: http://kisslauncher.com/.
KISS is the be-all-end-all launcher for me.
I guess that makes me a KISS ass.
The only thing I miss still is not being able to open drawer by swiping up (though fastscroll on letters is good enough, but kinda sucks that it only handles latin letters there, cuz like 3rd of my apps are in Cyrillic and thus stuck at the first category).
UX on foldable device is unmatched, especially after it added support for side-to-side widgets and widget stacking.
Another slight annoyance is that in modern android quickstep is no longer standard part of AOSP, and depends on how OEM implemented it, which means that on many devices (including mine mix fold 2) you either lose access to gesture navigation in order to use Niagara(I get around it by using Infinite Gestures + OMS overlay to hide the navbar) or get broken animations when swapping between apps and going home.
UPD: it also recently got client-side implementation of monet and built-in contextual variable icons, which works even on devices that don't have it as a part of AOSP. It works marvels and I can't get enough of how good it looks.
And in general, I wish more launchers had fastscroller as overlay option, so that you can get to any app via tapping/flicking onto a letter in a single tap/swipe. Once you experienced it, it's hard to go back to the app grid.
https://github.com/tanujnotes/Olauncher
Available on both fdroid and play store
I tried searching for open source launchers on F-Droid but there's no way to sort a search by date or popularity that I could find.
Instead you'll find it's full of lazy KISS clones that brag about the "minimalism" and "productivity" of search-based launchers... I'm sure that has nothing to do with those being much, much easier to code than ordinary graphical launchers :/
Kvaesitso is the exception, and the one I currently use - it's technically search-based, but it can add enough icons and widgets to the homepage so that during everyday use you don't actually need to type the names of your apps like a caveman.
software example: Krita https://store.steampowered.com/app/280680/Krita/ source code under GPLv3 https://invent.kde.org/graphics/krita
game example: Shapez https://store.steampowered.com/app/1318690/shapez/ source code under GPLv3 https://github.com/tobspr-games/shapez.io
Apps:
YouTube Music is set as my music app, so that appears whenever I've got headphones connected.Dead Comment