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Niagara Launcher

niagaralauncher.app

51–60 of 102 posts

Re: Niagara Launcher

#51

https://help.niagaralauncher.app/article/27-privacy-policy > 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.

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?

There is a business model: niagara premium.

Re: Niagara Launcher

#52
post #48
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On iOS, the thing I miss most is Nova. Replacing icons with images of your choice. Changing the swipe transition. Icon organization. Removing text.

Honestly it's the one thing I don't miss about Android. I always felt compelled to tinker with things a lot more than I should've.

Yeah, and equal time spent futzing with your launcher is better spent tinkering with a raspberry pi or similar. At least then you may develop a skill.

Android customization is sort of like junk food - enjoyable in the moment, but not meaningfully improving your life.

Re: Niagara Launcher

#53
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly it's the one thing I don't miss about Android. I always felt compelled to tinker with things a lot more than I should've.

Yeah, and equal time spent futzing with your launcher is better spent tinkering with a raspberry pi or similar. At least then you may develop a skill. Android customization is sort of like junk food - enjoyable in the moment, but not meaningfully improving your life.

I really disagree.

I use my phone more than any other device and having it be "beautiful" is an important part of my user experience

At this point any decoration in real life is useless because not productive

Re: Niagara Launcher

#55
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.

Re: Niagara Launcher

#56

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/ .

kiss is pure shit when you first install it. but if you take the time to set it up, it's like vim/emacs. things start to make sense

I think it worked fine for me with basically no setup, so I'm curious: what kind of setup did it require for you?

Re: Niagara Launcher

#57
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

Re: Niagara Launcher

#58
no search for contacts is deal breaker for me. i am checking time to time to learn if the feature is implemented. kiss launcher is perfect right now.

Re: Niagara Launcher

#59
post #19

Unfortunately, this is not on F-Droid, and it does not appear to be open source.

Fortunately it is an excellent piece of commercial, closed source software with a long history and a responsive developer. I tried searching for open source launchers on F-Droid but there's no way to sort a search by date or popularity that I could find.

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.

Re: Niagara Launcher

#60
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..
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