this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2026
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[–] kamen@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Dang... I saw this a while ago, but thanks to this post I looked again and it turned out that mine had automatically updated to the new version on Play Store. Went ahead and uninstalled it and then installed the latest Beta from before, and I was lucky that my email license still worked - don't know for how long though (not sure if the check is hardcoded in some way or if it makes an API call).

It's had a great run, but it's just sad that it has to end like this. Would've been spectacular if it was open-sourced as promised.

I started looking into alternatives and it seems like no other launcher is quite there yet, but Lawnchair looks promising for my use. The whole situation started looking like the appropriate time to learn some Android development; a while ago I was thinking of forking the AOSP launcher and trying to implement some stuff by myself, but now it seems like contributing to Lawnchair would be a better idea.

[–] Slashme@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've installed Lawnchair and I'm quite happy with it.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've tried it, but it's missing some things I'm used to - both functionally and visually.

[–] Slashme@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] kamen@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Off the top of my head:

  • complex gestures (tap + swipe, two finger swipe/rotate)
  • frequent/recent/new apps in app search
  • app drawer tabs
  • icon customisation for folders
  • creating home screen shortcuts for activities (or if that's possible, I couldn't find it).

Of course this shouldn't sound as a blame - I know Lawnchair is relatively young - those are a bit more advanced features that I grew used to over more than 10 years with Nova. When I manage to get a development environment running and some knowledge about Android, those are some of the first things I'd try to implement in Lawnchair.