Asklemmy

Since Nova has been bought I've replaced it with Neo Launcher. I like it 'cause it gives the option to resize widgets, customize the size of the home screen grid and add swipe up actions to home folders.

Lawnchair https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair

Nova us the best for me, always been. I also used Lawnchair for a long time and it's almost as great if you're fussy about Nova's new owner and stuff

Kiss launcher for me

Nova and Niagara seen to be the overwhelming favorites, but I like Smart Launcher. My brain doesn't cooperate with lists of apps in alphabetical or whatever, I lose apps or forget the name. Smart is great because it categorizes the apps into six default categories automagically, and you can edit/add/delete the categories or which category each app gets sorted into. So my Internet apps are on one space, games, media, etc. Makes the list of apps much easier to deal with. Not that it's perfect. Sometimes apps go weird places, but that's easy to fix. There's a bunch of other stuff, but that's my primary reason for using it.

Nova was the best till the ownership changed hands.

Lawnchair & MS launcher been pretty good.

Been trying a few. Niagara on my phone and Microsoft Launcher for my tablet.

Don't overly love Microsoft on my tablet honestly. Probably going to choose another listed in this thread to try.

Niagara has been great on my phone though. Just so minimal. Huge fan.

Nova launcher. I like the custom icons, specifically the Line Free package. I also wanted the wrap around scrolling for home screens which wasn't a feature on the first phone I put nova on. No idea if it is on my current phone because I went straight to Nova.

https://ibb.co/RcD7w2Q

Smart Launcher

Light weight and still feature rich. It automatically sorts apps into categories. It makes it so much easier to find the apps to launch.

I cannot stand the near endless long list of unsorted apps you get with most launchers.

I use Hyperion Launcher. I bought Nova launcher back in the day, but I left immediately when it was acquired by a data collection and analytics company.

Hyperion launcher basically provides all the same features as Nova launcher. It's a less intuitive to set up, but once you have it set up, it's just as good.

Used to use Niagara launcher, but moved to kvaesitso since it's FOSS. Both are very very good.

Action launcher (paid version) is my go to, some features I love about it:

• Allow for a desktop grid of up to 12*12, which I havent seen on any other launchers I have tried, I believe Nova had something similar, but not sure to this degree.

• The brilliant folder icon being the shortcut to the app which was the first app to have been put in it feature. You can later shuffle the app around to change it, of course. You swipe down on the folder icon to reveal the items inside like usual, but if you just tap on it, the app which is first in the list opens up, a very good time saver in my opinion.

• Widget stack is a cool feature also, where you can add similarly sized widgets to a single block of space on which you can scroll through to see the information as it suits you.

• Customization level is very high, you can have a dock, a drawer, and also a quick drawer which is a vertical list of apps, and all of these simultaneously too.

• A high level of gesture support. My phone just got an update where I have to swipe down from different sides to see notifications and quick settings, which are not changeable by default. With the action launcher settings I have sort of found a work around.

It allows me to have a minimal looking desktop with a lot of functionality and a high degree of customisation, very much worth the price.

Nova

Microsoft Launcher

It's free, it's customizable.

Lawnchair alpha

Indistract launcher Haven't found a better minimalistic/clean launcher even though it has some bugs. My home screen:

KISS Launcher. Perfect companion for a hardware keyboard (https://github.com/Dakkaron/Fairberry).

In general, you use it like the Windows start menu. Type the first few characters of an app name, hit enter and there you are.

nova launcher because its what i've always used. plenty fast and pretty customizable

Kvaesitso, it's simple, beautiful but has a lot of functionality, customizable and open-source :)

I used Nova Launcher on my S20 Ultra, and on my S7 before that, massive improvement over Samsung's default. Haven't installed it on my p7pro cause I really like Google's launcher, and I don't believe I had it on my p2xl either.

Olauncher is open source minimalist launcher. VERY minimalist. You can get up to 8 apps on the home page and swipe down to search for all other apps.

OLauncher here. I'm sick of all of the color and intensity and business on my home screen. I switched to a text-based launcher (which also has an excellent search function and intuitive home screen interface) and I've really enjoyed it.

Prior to that I used Nova for many years.

Lawnchair

Olauncher - very minimal, no distractions. Shows the app's full name instead of icons, handfull of links on the main page, the rest can be found in the app drawer in a long list of app names.

Edit: just saw the mention here of mlauncher, an open source fork. Making the switch now 🙂

Launcher 10

I use it because I got a smartphone too late for the Windows Phone era and I would've loved metro in a handheld form factor. I use it on my Pixel 4a.

I've never used anything but Nova for years and years now.

Total Launcher -- I didn't see this mentioned anywhere in the comments. When Nova sold out, I tried out a handful of launchers and landed on Total for the customizability.

Action Launcher. I like "covers" which are groups that launch the first item on tap but can be swiped up to open the group normally. I like the quick launch side tray thing, and the alpha list… I guess also I got sick of changing launchers and it does nothing I hate so I can just standardise on it.

I seem to be like most and while I've tried tons, I've always stuck with Nova (at least since I switched from Apex).

My main sticking point and the reason it'll be a long time before I switch? I NEED to be able to assign up/down swipes on icons. Tap opens app/folder, up swipe opens another app/folder, down swipe opens another app/folder.

At this point my homescreen has 6 icons and within 2 touches I can get to any of my 500 apps with nearly zero scrolling. If anyone knows another launcher that can do that, I'm all ears.