Funnily enough as I grow old and more money and time I have I seem to be experimenting way more with tech and get more into gaming as everything else seems settle ,than when busy studying in college.
Minimalist is nice too for something that just works but pretty bland, but for someone who just wants something that gets work done it’s pretty good as well, good shout.
I personally prefer my phone to look and feel great and a launcher is part of it , like part of your personality same with interesting cases and skins .
) is also amazing
Other launchers of my interest include - Niagara, Lawnchair back in the day (not sure how they are now) and finally something called focus launcher.
Maybe we should have a thread of phone customizations here. It would be fun posting our homepage screenshots also get inspiration.
Man, I just learned about Nova becoming spyware. That sucks, I’ve been using it since forever, transferring my setup across phones for the better part of a decade now. I’ll try blocking the spyware like some members above have done, but I might shift to a FOSS one as well. I’ve looked at stuff like Graphene OS as well, but that seems a little too hardcore for me at the moment. Maybe Lawnchair. I liked minimalist since it genuinely did reduce my screen time, so maybe I’ll revert to that while I figure out whether to continue Nova or shift.
For people who are concerned about Nova Launcher’s data collection (like myself), just use the last stable release before the buyout, which is 7.0.57. You can get the APK here (praise sideloading):
Since the day of the buyout, I never updated from the above-mentioned release version, disabled auto-updates, removed all permissions (except notifications), and disabled background data usage. That’s it!
what’s the deal with launchers guys? i always thought it drains your battery so much since it’s an external app acting like your default launcher, so i have never really tried any.
In case you haven’t used AOSP which is what you would term as “vanilla” android, then none of the launchers are vanilla. The Pixel launcher code is altogether different as is the case for Motorola. Vanilla looks do not equate to vanilla code.
Well I mean its pretty much meant same thing just semantics differnece , by vanilla I meant well ’ less flavour ’ which is what we mean by vanilla in normal english and very close to AOSP obv no carrier or Manufacturer ships AOSP as they will all have default configurations , system apps , update apps and so on but yeah pixels and to an extent Motorolas are pretty as AOSP as it gets from a manufacturer with some features and icons and stuff baked in rather than completely done from bottom to top like vivos launcher or Samsungs or too much bloat like all chinese sub brands btw which have wah too much custom apps and bloatware.
I think oxygen os is pretty nice though, from all custom manufacturer builds.
Anyway, Lawnchair launcher seems interesting too, might give it a go later o_O
same with interesting cases and skins 
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’ which is what we mean by vanilla in normal english and very close to AOSP obv no carrier or Manufacturer ships AOSP as they will all have default configurations , system apps , update apps and so on but yeah pixels and to an extent Motorolas are pretty as AOSP as it gets from a manufacturer with some features and icons and stuff baked in rather than completely done from bottom to top like vivos launcher or Samsungs or too much bloat like all chinese sub brands btw which have wah too much custom apps and bloatware.