Wow, that’s perfect. I’m actually really used to Niagara Launcher right now but I might consider Pixel Launcher. It’s just sooo smooth on a Pixel, no other launcher quite gets there, even Niagara.
It’s not. Particularly the switch to a multitasking view and some animations cannot be as smooth for any third party launcher due to the fact that the required API is not available to them. I don’t remember the details but I think it’s only available to system apps? I know it can be achieved with root but I don’t want that.
Just switched to Nova Launcher on my Pixel 7 about a month ago. Every once in a while —like, maybe once a week or so—it’ll take about a quarter second to load the home screen when I go to home. About as frequently, there will be a slight visual glitch when I launch an app, where the icon zooms out instead of in; but that doesn’t affect how long it takes to launch the app. I’ve also noticed an increase in my battery life, despite tripling the number of widgets since switching to Nova.
Just for anyone looking how to do this, you should have your default web browser set to Firefox (settings -> apps -> default apps) then swipe up from the home screen, search for the “Google” app, tap your profile picture in the top right, and go to settings -> general -> uncheck “Open web pages in the app.”
I started with this, but I have trained myself to use the search bar at the bottom of the home page as the beginning so often. That automatically opens Chrome regardless, unless you switch launcher.
It’s lighter as I get to decide what to keep, no loss of functionality as I can still install the Pixel apps from the Play Store if I want to (but with the advantage of added security from GrapheneOS as I can disable their network access among other things), except for Google Pay NFC payments which don’t work for now. We have a sticky thread about GrapheneOS if you want to know others’ impressions: lemmy.world/post/9432155
If there’s some security vulnerability, perhaps. That said it’s not ingesting data from the web. It’s ingesting data from me and some of the installed apps. It’s not a huge attack surface. I haven’t heard of CVEs for Pixel Launcher for example. Doesn’t mean there weren’t any. With all that said, I’m using the actively developed version.
Again, there are daily builds that can be downloaded straight from GitHub and installed. That’s what I’m running. The only significant downside to it is that new builds don’t install over old builds so you have to backup/restore via the launcher’s settings.
I only use Lawnchair because of the Arcticons icon pack, it doesn’t seem to work with the default trebuchet launcher. At least it didn’t last time I checked.
All the other launchers Arcticons supports are either exclusive to the Play Store, or simply not what I like, so Lawnchair it is.
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