New essential Android apps thread

Cadder said:
I've got Prime and I'm seeing ads. It's possible I've done something wrong but I only have the option to set Google or Nova as default - no differentiation between free and Prime.

Might be time to use something else, or see if Google have improved over the years.
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You're not the only Prime user seeing ads, the Nova subreddit has a few people getting it too. They contacted support and they have confirmed it's a bug. Some people have had luck by reinstalling the launcher, but it doesn't work for everyone.
 
I've uninstalled, restarted the phone, then reinstalled. Still got ads. I'll just wait for them to resolve it. Annoying in the interim sadly.

Is Nova still the best launcher or are there comparable out there?
 
Cadder said:
I've uninstalled, restarted the phone, then reinstalled. Still got ads. I'll just wait for them to resolve it. Annoying in the interim sadly.

Is Nova still the best launcher or are there comparable out there?
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Nova seems to be the best, just because when it was temporarily being shut down, everyone was looking for other launchers that were similar to nova.
 
What's so special about Nova nowadays?

Only asking (genuinely) as I'm pretty certain I purchased Nova many moons ago, but gave up using it soon after as phone manufacturers got their own launchers up to spec, and it didn't seem that necessary anymore.

Granted back in the day, you needed a 3rd party launcher as phones were rubbish, but I'm currently running the latest Hyper OS with a nice amount of customisation and the AI animated home screens & lock screens are hilarious!

I have bought Niagara in the past and realty liked that way of navigating the phone. But it doesn't play well with Xiaomi full screen gestures sadly. (Xiaomi issues, not Niagara).
 
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It still has certain customisation features that other launchers lacks/harder to do, as well as being very stable with hardly any bugs. Not to mention it's easy to backup/restore layouts to new phones, especially if you're changing brands (eg. Pixel to Samsung).

Definitely don't need it if the stock launcher does offer the customisations you want, but some brands like Pixel is still very bare bones.

@Cadder mentioned them on the page before, Octopi, Niagara and Smart launcher are ones worth testing. There was Lawnchair as well but I found that too buggy for daily use.
 
I do agree what you say about Pixel phones, I'd forgot how terrible a bare bones system is!

The little things that the manufacturers bloat their UI with, (that I normally despise) actually do make quality of life improvements in day to day life. Granted some things get annoying, but owning a Pixel phone (8pro) really felt like multiple steps backwards for me. I do appreciate that some folk love a stripped back system, but the Pixel is too far for me.

Samsung is the other end of the scale, having multiple doubled up apps as Samsung and Google compete on your handset to advertise there guff to you. :mad:

I suppose that's why I've had a Xiaomi phone spying on me for the last couple of generations :D
 
FlyingFish said:
I do agree what you say about Pixel phones, I'd forgot how terrible a bare bones system is!

The little things that the manufacturers bloat their UI with, (that I normally despise) actually do make quality of life improvements in day to day life. Granted some things get annoying, but owning a Pixel phone (8pro) really felt like multiple steps backwards for me. I do appreciate that some folk love a stripped back system, but the Pixel is too far for me.

Samsung is the other end of the scale, having multiple doubled up apps as Samsung and Google compete on your handset to advertise there guff to you. :mad:

I suppose that's why I've had a Xiaomi phone spying on me for the last couple of generations :D
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I had HyperOS on my 15 Ultra. Whilst okay it wasn't great. Nova blows it out of the water for customisation and getting it where I want it.

It's a major reason I won't go Xiaomi again given their lack of support for 3rd part launcher in tandem with gesture navigation.
 
My phone got updated to Hyper OS3 the other week. Normally I don't care about that sort of stuff, but having the app bubble top center is a really cool thing (total apple rip off), I also found The AI generated animated background and lock screens lots of fun and cool looking, making animated images from static shots in my gallery. Totally freaks people out when they see the phone come to life. Colleague at work was highly amused when my phone woke up and my cat Sammy winked at him :D

Fonts and icons, yeah.... Not as easy navigating around the Xiaomi themes department, but it's manageable.
 
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Cadder said:
Is Nova still the best launcher or are there comparable out there?
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I used Nova for about a decade but development has stopped for it now. I'm using Microsoft Launcher instead and it's really good. It has pretty much all of the same features as Nova has.
 
I too used Nova for longer than I can remember, but since the announcement I moved to Smart, once you get it set up like you like its great, I won't be moving back.
 
slipd said:
First update of Nova since the announcement? It's just installed.
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Second actually, first one was last week which introduced trackers (Facebook, Google) and ads, a quick check on the Nova subreddit this update apparently fixes the ads in the app drawer from Prime users. However I'm still not sure if the trackers are still active even with a Prime license.
 
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