Greetings! Just got my hands on the Fairphone 6+ with a full move to the /E/OS system, really like it so far.
However one thing i’m not a fan of is the Launcher, I miss my Widgets ._. So i will probably need to get another launcher, and was wondering if anyone knew some good customizable launchers that goes well with the /E/OS system?
I used to use Microsoft Launcher, but well…. pretty sure that got more trackers then features, saw the app lounge gave it a 5-10 score to…. I also used KWGT allot to make my own custom Widget, but seems it also might have some privacy issues.
Hence i thought id ask here if anyone know of good alternatives.
Lawnchair is always a good starting point. The actual version in F-Droid is 15.Beta 3.
Neo Launcher is almost the same but a different implementation. In F-Droid in version 0.9.3.
Currently I use Lynx Launcher. The actual version in App Lounge or Aurora is 1.4.7. This one is less icon based (OK, it has a home screen with icons) but more predestined for widgets. I placed here a picture of that. Note: some features are not free.
Thanks for the replies! so far i think Lawnchair is most suitable for my needs ^-^
cant seem to find any real alternatives to KWGT however, closest was something called SUKKO, but it is “Experimental, not for daily use”
Then again, if i read this privacy thing right, the main issue is just permissions, which is understandable since it wants to make widgets of all sorts. so might have to go with that.
I bought a Nova launcher lifetime license more then 10 years ago, I use that as my launcher.
The default bliss launcher feels, works and looks like IOS from 10 years ago…
Neo launcher is the most customisable launcher. It’s open source. But it automatically reset the icons and widgets custom order on my dock and desktop. This happens monthly, mostly after a phone restart. This situation is annoying.
Neo Launcher is just something like a reimplementation of Lawnchair. The features are almost exactly the same. Since Neo launcher has no recent updates (and crashed also on my device from time to time) a recent Lawnchair is probably a better choice.
Another candidate very similar to Lawnchair with the same features is Pear Launcher. It has a free version and a paid one but both are not open source. (The paid version shows message bullets, the free version doesn’t.) A functional addition Pear Launcher brings is a set of visual transitions when you change between the screens, Lawnchair allows only simple horizontal gliding.
Thank you, I’m happy with the launcher you suggested. Lawnchair is an excellent launcher. However I’m still missing a feature from Neo launcher. Hide one or many apps under the cover of one app in the dock.
This is what I’ve been seeing with it too, and I couldn’t take it anymore after some months and I recently looked for something else, and ended up with Smart Launcher, which I think is even a little more customizable. I was used to Apex Launcher until it got taken off the app store, and everything since then has been a quest to find something as powerful as Apex (which, yes, had a bunch of trackers in it, but once you deny it network access, who cares).
A proper launcher for me has to focus on icons (not search, like it seems is the obsession with every launcher on F-Droid right now), allow folders in the dock, allow multiple homescreen pages with an option on which should be the default you get on Home button press, allow grid and text label size customization, allow the placement of icons anywhere on the homescreens with any empty areas you want, allow a continuous vertically scrolling rows-and-columns view of the apps drawer (not just space-wasting alphabetical mode, and not only side-swiping pages or tabs), allow multiple icon shapes and folder shapes, including ‘natural’ icons with their own alpha map and irregular shapes if that’s what the developer decided (currently I think only my MobiCalc scientific calculator still has an old-school free-form icon like that, every other one I have that’s free-form is based on using my own image files collection from storage for some of the app icons ← another functionality the launcher should support).
Smart Launcher does all of these things, buuut it does force me to do some extra work to keep the app drawer organized, as it comes with these “categories” by default, which I’ve had to delete and replace with my own single category to get all my apps in one view. (I think it allows you to disable categories completely in the paid version, but I’m still making myself comfortable with it before deciding if I’m going to buy it.)
Then I installed Shelter to keep some apps more securely(?) isolated from the main profile’s data, and noticed that Smart Launcher doesn’t automatically create separate tabs in the app drawer for Personal and Work apps (like Lineage’s Trebuchet launcher does), so I created a second tab for Work manually. The inconvenience now is that any newly installed app will get its icon placed in the last-created (rightmost) apps tab regardless if it’s a main profile or Work app, so I will always have to go in and move it manually. I guess I can minimize this extra work if I re-order them so the Personal tab is at the right side, so it always gets all the new icons for new apps, then I only have to move the Work ones manually, which will happen far less often.
Denying network access on LineageOs, /e/Os… is not reliable since internet is not a permission but a simple toggle that many smart apps like WhatsApp, google apps… can easily bypass.
Smart launcher can be nice but unfortunately not open source.
Ah, I don’t rely on the stock network permission because /e/OS is implementing the incorrect ‘default allow’ philosophy where every new app gets network access by default and you have to go in to deny it manually. I use NetGuard set to ‘default deny’. Should be reasonably reliable since it’s implemented as a VPN service.
Wrt. open-source, this is not among OP’s requirements, nor mine.
Or RethinkDNS. Denying network access or access to specific servers for a concrete app shouldn’t be a problem at all.
Another thing is that these trackers can still cost accu power for nothing and perhaps they also collect data and store them in files. BTW: you give the provider of such an app also a download.
I’ve used RDNS in the past but it’s way more complex than what I need right now. In fact, I might want to install a true VPN later, in which case I will have to get rid of NetGuard as well and return to my old solution of running AFWall+ to get this default-deny firewall behavior, since I’m rooted.
No, not in this case, as Apex Launcher is ancient and taken off the app store. Or another app I don’t want to give up, (Dorado/Felink App) PixelPhone as my dialler, also has trackers, but it’s also very old and taken off the app store years ago.
Some say even with denied network access these apps with trackers in them could pass their payloads to other apps that do have network access, and exfitrate the data that way, but honestly with such old apps it’s highly improbable - they were built for an era when Android wasn’t allowing per-app network restriction, so this wasn’t even a problem they needed to solve.
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Works well for my use case. Stable on eOS.