I woke up this morning to an awful looking homescreen on my Android - turns out my Niagara Launcher subscription had lapsed!

I went to check the renewal prices, and they were literally 2-3x more expensive than what I was paying recently - not really excited about that.

Since my homescreen already looked like garbage, I decided may as well try Kvaesitso, a FOSS search-based launcher. I tried it in the past, but abandoned it since I would want to set up my homescreen and apply an icon pack to all the apps individually.

After several hours of setup (mainly applying the icon pack 😭), I’ve been using it throughout the rest of the day and I’m pretty pleased with it, it’s a very smooth, polished and well thought out minimal search-focused launcher. Here’s what I like and don’t like so far:

Like

  • Search is much more powerful: can use DuckDuckGo or any custom search engine, search app shortcuts (i.e. webpages saved as apps), as well as tagging apps - none of these are possible in Niagara
  • Very, very customizable
  • Supports gestures to open apps or run things, so even less apps are needed on my homescreen
  • The clock looks so nice
  • Cool charging animation that shows rising bubbles from the bottom of the homescreen
  • Contextual media controls under the clock
  • Allows full-size widgets on the homescreen, these can be hidden off-screen by default if you prefer

Meh but not dealbreakers

  • Upcoming calendar events don’t show up under the clock, however there is a very nice custom calendar widget included
  • Contextual media app cannot be set (e.g. when bluetooth/3.5mm headphone is connected, pin music app on homescreen)

Highly recommend giving it a try if your Niagara subscription lapses, and open to trying a neat FOSS alternative!

F-Droid | GitHub

  • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏OP
    2·
    1 year ago

    Both were minor annoyances for me at first lol, thankfully the widget button can be removed (Settings, Home Screen, Edit button - toggle off)

    The favorites box is an interesting one, I was originally puzzled with it being empty until I started opening and pinning apps. Now settled on using it as an overflow for my home screen, where 5 of the most used are shown under the clock (with music permanently pinned), and the rest sit in the favorites box.

    I did notice some stutter on the apps menu which only occurs while the keyboard is open, but goes away completely when the keyboard disappears. For others it seems like the entire app drawer is stuttery (noticed a long discussion on GitHub with some potential solutions: https://github.com/MM2-0/Kvaesitso/issues/257 )