After Working on it alone for a year, the founder and original developer of Nova Launcher Kevin Barry has stopped working on Nova Launcher and the open sourcing efforts. More Info: https://teslacoilapps.com/nova/solong.html

  • Armand1@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    I had noticed that Nova had been falling behind for the last couple of years, but I didn’t know why. I’ve been using it for over 10 years.

    It sounds like a case of “buy it, kill it” which is pretty sad. If it had been open sourced we might have been able to improve it and keep it alive.

    • themurphy@lemmy.ml
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      5 days ago

      Yeah, they laid off the whole team behind Kevin. I would quit too, if I saw my creation fall that way.

    • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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      4 days ago

      I stopped using it years ago when it got bought and immediately injected with spyware. Neo Launcher or Lawnchair are very similar to Nova. Lawnchair gets more active development, but I use Neo because it’s nearly the same as Nova.

        • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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          4 days ago

          Yea, running from repo there are updates, but yea, sad it has stagnated for releases. It’s why I’m starting to look at Lawnchair again.

      • Rusty@lemmy.ca
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        4 days ago

        I’m still using Nova Launcher, can you elaborate on the spyware part?

        • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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          4 days ago

          They were acquired by Branch Analytics, and right after the APK went up in size by 150% with no visible changes.

          It then asks for location and accessibility (to see notifications) permissions.

          They then got rid of most of the staff, leaving a sole developer.

          No one knows what it sends back home (at least not the last time I read about it, which was years ago).