> Personal Data collected: Cookies, unique device identifiers, Usage Data and IDs (package names) from installed apps.
It sends a unique device identifier, your IP address and your app usage to Firebase. I understand why the developer would want crash reports but he gathers a lot of data on users.
Niagara Launcher dev here - that's a valid concern, especially since launcher apps have access to a lot of personal data.
We have created a document that outlines why we collect the data we do: https://help.niagaralauncher.app/article/109-privacy-policy-....
In short, we only collect data to power our features, verify if the user owns our premium version, improve our app, and for public research and statistics.
If you have questions about specific pieces of data or anything else, please feel free to ask.
I believe in the good intentions of you and the team, but my advice here is to build a data management and retention process to be future proof.
What it means is you create a policy of non-ad-value data collection and very short identifiable data retention to avoid a future change of hearts (maybe you get big and acquired, maybe you bring a Zuckerberg to the team...who knows).
By doing this you not only protect the users data but you help the community trust your good intentions.
Good point. We use Firebase/Google Analytics for basic analytics (e.g., to analyze what features of Niagara Launcher are used the most and capture crashes). More sensitive data (e.g., the history of app launches if the user opts into our Digital Wellbeing Initiative) is only sent to our servers, hosted by Hetzner, to have complete control over the data. We delete it after 90 days. I don't know the retention periods of the Firebase and Google Analytics products off the top of my head; I'll discuss with our team how long they are and if anything persists longer than necessary. I'll also update the linked article afterward - thanks for the tip!
Keep up the good work, I've used Niagara when I was at Android (on iOS now by my firm Rules) and I found it a very good value prop with an polished execution.
Seeing there is no business model (or did I miss that?), how likely is it that this app is sending installed app lists to 3rd party for appstore analytics like Data.ai and similar services? Something needs to pay the bills?
Rest assured, we don't sell your data. We're a small indie team solely financed by Niagara Pro, our in-app upgrade. I'm forever thankful to our community that it is enough to pay the bills and to develop the app further.
I really appreciate how Android made the “graphical shell” a user-replaceable component of the OS.
Back in the day, I used Nova Launcher and an icon pack to completely re-theme my home screen. I felt so cool.
I encourage anyone curious to take a look at the following subreddit for some neat themes that users have created for themselves over the years using custom launchers: https://www.reddit.com/r/androidthemes/top/?t=all
I don't get it, how is it different from customizing any other OS, except that Android has many more options to do so than the very-limited iOS? You spend countless hours on your phone, why wouldn't you sit down for an hour to make it suit your needs better if the defaults bother you? I tweaked Nova Launcher on mine, spent an hour or two doing that, what, 8 years ago now? Definitely worth the time.
I very much hate the default Android and iOS experiences. I guess the downside is that making my phone more usable means, well, I actually use it more (i.e., too much).
> Android customization is sort of like junk food - enjoyable in the moment, but
not meaningfully improving your life.
Hard disagree. I assume you have some technical background, that's why you consider it not meaningful. Go speak to someone that knows nothing about it, which is the majority of the people I assume, I'm pretty sure they learn a lot in the way.
That may be true for purely decorative skinning for some people (although personally I enjoy using interfaces more when they have excellent visual design, iconography, layout and consistency). However interface customization can go far beyond aesthetic visuals to adding functions, default behaviors and time-saving shortcuts, improving interface hierarchy and surfacing frequently used options. Another key area is speeding up navigation by hiding unused things and increasing legibility with better UI density and typography. I find these kinds of customizations do meaningfully improve usage efficiency and utility, making a real difference on devices I use constantly.
For instance, taking control of my phone's three physical buttons with custom double-press and long-press actions that are contextual is so useful I can't imagine using a phone without it. I've also added a custom contextual action to double-tapping the back of my phone that I use constantly. This uses the phone's accelerometer and, surprisingly, works perfectly with no false positives. I use my phone a lot for reading e-books, controlling home automation, photography and other use cases where I'm switching between portrait and landscape modes frequently. Customizing automatic screen rotation to be per app, by time of day and even by location is another one of those seemingly little things that's just so nice in constant daily usage.
Some people argue all these things should just be built-in to phones and "it's a bug" the designers didn't just set-up everything "correctly" in the first place. But the reality is people have different innate preferences about some kinds of usage modes and defaults. For example, I'm highly spatial vs my wife who's very sequential. She prefers contextually adaptive "smart" interfaces that change to list the most likely options first. She can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want that. However, my brain expects stuff to be in the same place it was last time and it throws me when things keep moving around. I think this is more than just a preference or learned behavior, it's an innate trait like handedness. While people can force themselves to adapt across this divide, it will always be uncomfortable and slower.
Then there there is the current UX design obsession with "simplifying" interfaces by removing features, reducing density and increasing the remaining spacing and typography sizes to the point of, IMHO, insanity. This is another reason when it comes to devices I'll use constantly, I consciously choose those I can significantly customize and adapt (eg Android, Windows, Linux, Firefox, etc). Of course, I don't customize every use case. What matters is having the option to do so for those usages which make a meaningful difference to me.
Do you have any recommendations for launchers to check out? I don’t daily drive Android but keep a couple devices on that side of the fence around for dev purposes and have been underwhelmed with the options I’ve tried so far. I was expecting something more like the old Windows alternative shells (which could differ radically from Explorer) but third party Android launchers don’t seem all that different from what devices come with and overall kind of samey, either being app grids or lists.
I've used Nova for maybe a decade at this point. For me it's the best, hands down. I gladly paid for the premium version.
I have a super minimal and frictionless gesture-based interface going. No app clutter clogging up the screen at all.
Everything I need to do is executed by a one or two finger gesture, no scrolling to find apps and nothing obscuring a nice wallpaper that automatically rotates daily (using Tasker).
Email? Slide one finger up.
Messages? One finger down.
Calendar? Two fingers up.
Phone dialer? Two fingers down.
Maps? Double tap anywhere. Etc.
IMO it was really easy to set up and probably actually keeps me off my phone more than I would be otherwise. If it didn't exist it would be the launcher I'd build for myself.
If you are like me and want a super tranquil "phone-flow" I would highly recommend getting Nova and using the gestures feature.
I spent a long time after Windows Phone died trying to find an Android launcher that felt as clean and intuitive, and I failed. Microsoft did, however, release their own launcher which for me has proven to be the least sucking of the closed source options. I don't use any of the social features or other widgets, but I do clean everything off the home screen (including the dock) and just have a handful of large icons clustered along the sides where they are easy for me to reach. Combine with a nice icon pack and you can get a pretty minimal desktop. Swipe to get to the app drawer. It's still fundamentally a grid, though.
The closest launcher (that I know of) to Windows Phone UI is Square Home [0]. I used it for a long time, years ago, and is one of the few apps I actually paid for.
I loved Square but I eventually started getting a bizarre problem where it... wouldn't register my taps, until I swiped up from the bottom of the screen ("home" gesture) and then it would open whatever I'd been ineffectually hitting.
This is terrific. I just installed and within about 10 minutes had the home screen and drawer set up exactly how I like. The only thing I'm missing from Microsoft Launcher is the combo clock/date/weather widget.
I used to love LawnChair (also, best name), because it was simple and functional. Then it wasn't updated any longer, and at some point broke some Widgets. R.I.P.
After much searching, I've settled on Hyperion instead.
Essentially, I want the Google Launcher without the Google Search Bar. And maybe a slightly denser icon spacing. Hyperion does that trick, even with the free version. But, to stave off another LawnChair situation, I decided to give them a subscription regardless, just so it stays around.
Big coincidence, I just switched to Niagara, complaint: too much scrolling, no auto updates.
I like it better than Oasis (which I might be confusing for something else), complaint: too minimal.
My go to for years was Square Home, great until last years' reinstall, then something (I forget), which was prob a combination of my fault and Android whatever it's on now (maybe 11).
My only other (notable) like is Smart Launcher, which is honestly great except for all the "cloud integration" stuff.
This a good place to plug my favorite launcher? Search-based launchers in general are something I just cannot live without nowadays, there's way less friction there with openint apps and such.
Kvæsitso is the one I use currently: https://kvaesitso.mm20.de/. The design is really good, and the widget support is nice. Search is not as perfect ass the classic KISS, though: http://kisslauncher.com/.
I keep downloading this hoping I can switch from Microsoft Launcher to an open source solution, and every single time I get stuck because I can't find out how to add apps on the home screen. I've looked through all the docs and they all say stuff like "scroll to the bottom of the widget list and add favorites", and yet... there is no widget list. Long press doesn't do anything. Hamburger button only gives me launcher settings (where there is no widget list). Searching for "widget" shows no results, so even if I embrace the search concept it doesn't do what I expect. The clock is pretty, though.
That's a bit too streamlined for me. I don't group apps by their first letter, I group them by purpose of convenience. I need a lot more than maybe ten favorites on screen and having to scroll or go into a menu to find anything beyond that is just a waste of time. Yes, there are folders but other than with Nova Launcher you can't see which apps are in there unless you open one. I like being able to see a notification bubble on an app within a folder. The concept is slick but it doesn't match my usage pattern at all.
I guess the design of the launcher is meant to make you more intentional about using your phone by adding friction. Reduced notifications, smaller selection of favorite apps to choose from, and search for everything else. And it's not on the extreme end of inconvenience for search-oriented launchers.
I've been using Niagara since its first days. Absolutely loving it and it keeps getting better year over year.
The only thing I miss still is not being able to open drawer by swiping up (though fastscroll on letters is good enough, but kinda sucks that it only handles latin letters there, cuz like 3rd of my apps are in Cyrillic and thus stuck at the first category).
UX on foldable device is unmatched, especially after it added support for side-to-side widgets and widget stacking.
Another slight annoyance is that in modern android quickstep is no longer standard part of AOSP, and depends on how OEM implemented it, which means that on many devices (including mine mix fold 2) you either lose access to gesture navigation in order to use Niagara(I get around it by using Infinite Gestures + OMS overlay to hide the navbar) or get broken animations when swapping between apps and going home.
UPD: it also recently got client-side implementation of monet and built-in contextual variable icons, which works even on devices that don't have it as a part of AOSP. It works marvels and I can't get enough of how good it looks.
And in general, I wish more launchers had fastscroller as overlay option, so that you can get to any app via tapping/flicking onto a letter in a single tap/swipe. Once you experienced it, it's hard to go back to the app grid.
Running it for a few years. Very good! Helps you focus on what matters, easy to tweak and fork. Replacing the default OnePlus launcher make me gain a bit more performance as well, especially switching accounts on the phone! Plus I suspect some battery as well.
If you search for launchers in F-Droid, regular ones are largely nonexistent / unmaintained (Neolauncher has some repo activity, but the last actual release is from two years ago).
Instead you'll find it's full of lazy KISS clones that brag about the "minimalism" and "productivity" of search-based launchers... I'm sure that has nothing to do with those being much, much easier to code than ordinary graphical launchers :/
Kvaesitso is the exception, and the one I currently use - it's technically search-based, but it can add enough icons and widgets to the homepage so that during everyday use you don't actually need to type the names of your apps like a caveman.
After being stabbed in the back so many times by non-FOSS software I find it hard to trust companies that promote that kind of dependent relationship. I gladly pay to support free software that I heavily rely on like an Android launcher.
If people paying for FOSS was the norm, we wouldn't have a post on the FOSS developers not making money on the front page every 2 months. I don't blame people for not going this route.
This launcher has solved launchers imo, organization barely matters when if you simply remember the name of the app, you can get there in under a second easily.
Sometimes I forget something was in my favorites and just use the scroll by habit, its just that big a non issue.
Your thoughts about the Niagara Launcher and how it solves your problems, is quite interesting to me.
You mention you simply remember the name, I find that difficult for me. I don't remember whether it's "Google Maps" or "Maps", if it's "Headphones" or "Sony Headphones".
I have tried a few times to get into the Niagara launcher, but without luck. It's too mm. "sterile" for me?. I really like being able to group apps in the 2D-"space" of the grid system. Main screen tries to be uncluttered but music control to the right, light-bulbs control to the left, car in middle.
Payment? That's a bottom row on page 2. Communication - right side of lower row. Etc. etc.
It does sometimes get a bit wonky . not very "pleasent" to the eye, but it's so pleasent for my brain at least.
I sometimes try to clean up, but the apps often ends up grouping together again in almost the same configuration.
Here's to difference preferences for launchers! Cheers.
I've been using the Microsoft Launcher for years. I have all my apps on one 6x5 grid (with the top row showing time/date/weather) in addition to the 5 bottom tray apps. The infrequently used apps are in group folders, so every app is at most two taps away. The frequently used apps are on the bottom 60% of the screen.
I've been using this for a year and I love it. My favorite feature is how it organizes notifications under each app so I don't miss important things. Also I can dismiss all notifications from a category of apps (all social notifications for example) in one swipe on my home screen. I've set up folders for my major app categories and I see notifications grouped at a top level there by category, so no massive list of combined morning notifications in Android to deal with.
I'm a fan of this launcher; I switched to it when I realized I only ever launched things via typing the app name into search. Why not just have a list of apps by name then? Works great.
It's a real testament to Android's flexibility too. It's terrific to be able to radically change the UI for the phone.
I still wish someone would take up the torch from ZLauncher. I still use it on my phone as it's just such a great launcher. I tried Niagara, but I found myself looking for the letters too much. With ZLauncher I can type the letter without even looking at my phone. You might think it would be annoying to have to write multiple letters (like you see people doing in many of the videos about the launcher) but the launcher remembers you most searched for apps for a certain letter. So after a couple searches your frequently used apps will be on top after only one letter. I do wish it had better support for widgets though, especially something like the pop-up widgets from the Blackberry Priv. But all in all it's a great launcher and it's a shame it was discontinued..
I love Lynx Launcher - best one I found after Evie was discontinued.
Like many others in the thread, I really like how I have freedom of choice w.r.t. launchers (I personally dislike the iOS home screen and the stock Google launcher, fwiw).
Tried using it on tablet some time ago. Felt handicapped comparing to Nova Launcher, some useful stuff was locked behind premium. Instead of nice easy to use app grid you have unbearable list where all apps grouped by letters and you have to manually choose certain letter to see what apps available there.
The only positive thing about that launcher is that it helped me localize issue with lagging wallpapers but after that I happily deleted it.
I'm a fan of smart launcher. It has 8 gestures that you can map to frequently used apps (or various phone activities), and supports both searching by app name and browsing by app category. It's weird that Google haven't innovated much in their default launcher, but I really like that I have the choice to customize.
Niagara Launcher is broken on my S10+. The apps don't align to the left correctly, sometimes I get two columns of apps instead of one, sometimes the text and icons are incredibly small and difficult to read. I had to cancel my subscription
I used Android for a long time before switching back to an iPhone. While mostly I’m happy with my iPhone, I do miss some of the UI customization features like being able to switch graphical shells like this
I gave it a quick test drive but almost immediately uninstalled it because it wouldn't let me dismiss the cluttering messages on top of the app list :/
Looks promising though. Thanks for sharing.
I'm using and enjoying Niagara on my Android phone. If I were to switch to iOS, is there any setting or app provides a comparable minimalistic experience?
i never even thought about niagra on a folding phone, that actually sounds like it'd be great! i've been using it on a "regular" phone for the past year or 2 and honestly now i'm curious how it feels on a fold, and what kind of extra features the extra real estate could give. temptin me to go buy a folding phone next upgrade around :D
My guess is that there's an implied "/s", since it may remind iPhone users of what App Library looks like when they tap the search bar. https://imgur.com/a/nC2R0hG
The App Library is nice because it relieves iOS users from micromanaging app grouping/arrangement. I now have just one Home Screen of widgets (including contextual Siri app suggestions), then swipe left to use App Library when needed.
> Personal Data collected: Cookies, unique device identifiers, Usage Data and IDs (package names) from installed apps.
It sends a unique device identifier, your IP address and your app usage to Firebase. I understand why the developer would want crash reports but he gathers a lot of data on users.