Nova Launcher has been acquired by analytics company Branch
www.androidpolice.com
Hopefully, this isn’t the end of an era for Android launchers

Since a few folks seem unaware of this, I’m posting anew for visibility.

  • viking@infosec.pubEnglish
    51·
    2 months ago

    Ok so I just started digging for alternatives, thanks to your question.

    I had previously simply deactivated network access for Nova (Settings -> Apps -> App Management -> Select Nova -> Data Usage -> Disable Mobile Data, Disable Wi-Fi, and flick the switch for Background Data for good measure.

    Now, that will result in a toast on the main screen every time you unlock the phone “Data for Nova7 is disabled, you can activate it in the settings”. This might however be a OnePlus specific error, since searching for it only gives me a result in their product forum.

    Nevertheless, I dug around with LogCat Reader and found that the message is displayed by com.android.systemui. Not really surprising, but I wasn’t sure which exact system resource is responsible. So then I went ahead with AppOps and set the “Display Toast” permission to “Ignore”, and voila.

    Caveats:

    1. You need root to use AppOps
    2. You won’t get any toast now (I don’t actually remember seeing any useful ones in over a decade, but there might be something out there)