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

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[–] Armand1@lemmy.world 72 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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 39 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] norambna@programming.dev 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What team? He wrote he was the only one working on Nova for the past year.

[–] winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com 34 points 1 month ago

Yea because they laid everyone off already

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Armand1@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Neo launcher hasn't had a release for 3 years, sadly.

Lawnchair is alright but it is missing a bunch of features compared to Nova.

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 points 1 month 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 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 3 points 1 month 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).