I’ve tried looking for launchers that have this feature, but have yet to see it mentioned anywhere.
I despise how the focus of development for at least the past decade has been form over function. I like information-dense displays, and Google has gotten everybody to waste so much screen real estate on looks (never mind other crappy UI decisions). My home screen widget layout is the one big thing keeping me on Nova.
Lawnchair has this and is the closest to Nova that I’ve found.
Lawnchair Settings > Homescreen > Widget settings > Allow overlap
Here it is in action:
Where is the Lawnchair repository that is currently active? I tried the obvious one and got a message that it is built for older versions of Android. There must be another variant that is still being developed.
Thank you! I was looking in the right place, but hadn’t thought to enable pre-releases. All is now good.
100% Lawnchair. Pear launcher is nice as well, but I favor Lanwchair.
I don’t know if it’s exacly what you’re looking for, and it’s early so still has some bugs, but try Octopi Launcher. It allows you to stack widgets into cards and gives you pretty granular grid flexibility.
I’ve been using Octopi for a few months now. It works for me, but I do miss a few features. I really want the ability to store folders in folders. And I wish the landscape layout was derived from the portrait layout, instead of being separate. At least the first of those issues seems to be on the list of planned features, so I am hopeful.
I think one of the main selling features that made Octopi stand out from the others was the multiple home screen layouts. I agree with you and would prefer only one, but supposedly it’s a killer feature for people who have folding phones with multiple screens so they can have different layouts for each mode the phone is used in. Hopefully a toggle will be made for us normies somewhere down the road to just have one. Or, maybe I’m being closed minded and there’s another way I could be using s landscape homescreen that I haven’t thought of yet.
That’s where I ended up too. It seems to be the closest to what Nova used to be.
I was hoping for something open source so I wouldn’t have to deal with it becoming crapified at some point down the line. While Octopi currently doesn’t contain trackers, it IS dependent upon Google Play Services which is a bit of a turn off.
However, I gave it a try & was having the most bizarre behavior trying to place widgets exactly. While they’d start out where I dropped them, upon resizing & trying to fine-tune placement I repeatedly wound up with the widget partially off the right edge of the screen & unable to move it back - each additional attempt would move it further off the edge.
Maybe I’ll try again once I’ve got Graphine installed & running, but no go for now. Thanks for the suggestion nonetheless.
Yes, it has some rough edges. I remember a few months back icons would be different sizes depending on how you added them to the home screen, but that’s been fixed.
I agree that I’d rather it be open source, but I haven’t found one that can handle folders within app icons like Nova, and this is the closest one. The price is reasonable and the updates are regular, so I’ll stay here for a while. It definitely has promise.
I switched to Octopi when I started to get ads on the homescreen with Nova
I saw Fossify has a launcher in beta available in f-droid. May not be up to your needs (yet?) though, but worth a try.
TY, but yeah - tried it already & it’s not there, and I doubt the kind of granular control I’m looking for over my home screen is anywhere on their feature implementation roadmap. FOSSify apps seem to target complete functionality of a minimal expected feature set, but with few frills added.
Thx for the suggestion, tho!
Right now, I haven’t run across one with that function, but I also haven’t specifically looked for it either.
Octopi is my backup currently, as it gets closest to nova features that I do use. So that wood be my suggestion to check
Personally, I use Kvaesitso, which is a search-based launcher that works really well for me. If that’s not your style, Lawnchair is another option that is closer to stock Android
Kvaesito is great but definitely not what he’s looking for. I love it though. Very different from any of the other launches I’ve used
I looked at that one 2-3 years ago,. Yeah, i could see it for certain uses, but not what I’m looking for on my phone. Thanks, tho.
LAWNCHAIR!! Available on fdroid as well!
Just had a look, and I can’t see Lawnchair on Fdroid for some reason.
Gotta add the izzyondroid repo, super easy. Or go with droidify or neostore instead of base fdroid. They are both fdroid clients with nicer ui, and better features, and comes with Izzy on droid, as well as the guardian project repo apps enabled and available by default. On base fdroid, you have to add new repos manually.
Ah ok, thanks. Bit beyond me that, but all good 👍
Naw dude, dont say that! incredibly easy. You can download neostore from fdroid, then uninstall fdroid. Boom. Then the lawnchair launcher will be available as soon as you boot up neostore. Its genuinely a great fdroid replacement, and its super easy. You’ll have tons of new and cool apps available
Fair enough, will maybe check it out, thanks 👍
I’m not especially looking for a new launcher right now, but always good to have the occasional look around at what’s out there.
Not sure if this 100% fits but I used the stacking widgets on Nova for a long while. Switched to Niagara launcher 2 years ago and have 5 widgets set up ay the top of my homescreen that I can swipe through.
If you ever decide you want a less information dense display I use a launcher called Slate that is the opposite of what you’re looking for currently.
There are a ton of copycats of this launcher style on F-Droid (and likely more that aren’t). They don’t fit my usage style whatsoever.
The biggest drawback for me is the sheer number of apps I have both for work and personal use. This style of launcher requires that I’m always able to think of the name of the app I want every time, as opposed to finding them in the category folders I’ve set up. Even those that support categorization would require me to search 2x & probably still scroll (whereas currently I can open the app drawer and immediately open the category folder I want from muscle memory). With my aging brain (Gen X, and a life not lived in a manner most healthy for my brain function), remembering every app name is just not happening.
