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
    339·
    8 months ago

    Doesn’t matter, as long as you restrict internet access for it.

    Since there are no alternatives coming even close, I refuse to switch just because.

      • pulverizedcoccyx@lemmy.caEnglish
        122·
        8 months ago

        Adguard can firewall it. Now I’ll wait for somebody to reply to me saying how horrible adguard is for privacy haha

      • viking@infosec.pubEnglish
        71·
        8 months ago

        https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard

        The only caveat is that it’s setting itself up as a local VPN for the block/allow list, so you can’t use it in parallel with an actual VPN. My workaround is to have my actual VPN installed directly on the router both at home and at work, which covers 98% of my use cases.

      • player2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        61·
        8 months ago

        Check out TrackerControl on the F-Droid app store. It lets you block Internet access to individual apps and selectively block trackers and other analytics. It does this by acting as a VPN in the android OS so it won’t work while on another VPN but that’s good enough for my needs.

        https://trackercontrol.org/

      • viking@infosec.pubEnglish
        51·
        8 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)