Nitter link provided instead of Twitter post. Screenshot below.
Why do you need to trust a launcher with your data at all? Why does it ever leave your device? This made me very skeptical about them.
A launcher needs a lot of privileges to do its work. I have to trust it that it does not collect/send anything to anywhere.
My AOSP launcher has zero permissions, except one that I optionally enabled to see notifications so it can do the little notification dots on my app icons.
I tried the alternatives people were suggesting on reddit at the time:
- Some are clean (no trackers, etc), but change the experience too much and I want a traditional launcher.
- Some work like I expect them to, but Exodus ( https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/ ) shows lots of trackers... moving from one that might track in the future to one that already tracks is not a good move.
- Open source alternatives, which I prefer, either move very slow (Neo Launcher) or are dead.
- Not all handle gesture navigation or Android 12/13 well.
So I'm still on Nova. I did upgrade to the beta as after a certain A13 update the stable version started bugging out, but that's it. I use LineageOS and can remove internet access from apps, so that's what I did. My hope is that Neo Launcher becomes more active, but until a few things are improved/fixed, I'll stay on Nova.
I could just use the stock launcher on LineageOS btw... the reason I don't is that it's easier to backup an app and restore it after a reset/moving ROMs.
Been using lawnchair since forever, I try to avoid closed source apps as much as possible, so Nova was never an option for me.
