My Niagara Launcher subscription ended today... enter Kvaesitso

I woke up this morning to an awful looking homescreen on my Android - turns out my Niagara Launcher subscription had lapsed!

I went to check the renewal prices, and they were literally 2-3x more expensive than what I was paying recently - not really excited about that.

Since my homescreen already looked like garbage, I decided may as well try Kvaesitso, a FOSS search-based launcher. I tried it in the past, but abandoned it since I would want to set up my homescreen and apply an icon pack to all the apps individually.

After several hours of setup (mainly applying the icon pack 😭), I’ve been using it throughout the rest of the day and I’m pretty pleased with it, it’s a very smooth, polished and well thought out minimal search-focused launcher. Here’s what I like and don’t like so far:

Like

  • Search is much more powerful: can use DuckDuckGo or any custom search engine, search app shortcuts (i.e. webpages saved as apps), as well as tagging apps - none of these are possible in Niagara
  • Very, very customizable
  • Supports gestures to open apps or run things, so even less apps are needed on my homescreen
  • The clock looks so nice
  • Cool charging animation that shows rising bubbles from the bottom of the homescreen
  • Contextual media controls under the clock
  • Allows full-size widgets on the homescreen, these can be hidden off-screen by default if you prefer

Meh but not dealbreakers

  • Upcoming calendar events don’t show up under the clock, however there is a very nice custom calendar widget included
  • Contextual media app cannot be set (e.g. when bluetooth/3.5mm headphone is connected, pin music app on homescreen)

Highly recommend giving it a try if your Niagara subscription lapses, and open to trying a neat FOSS alternative!

F-Droid | GitHub

Fredol,

It’s a bit unbelievable that someone who frequents foss communities would also pay a monthly subcription for an app…

lemann,

Free google play credit, I usually get an email every year for it

But I do pay for Plex, despite Jellyfin being a thing. If I like something and it’s worth it to me personally, why not 🤷‍♂️… but you will never find me defending their kinda crappy decisions like the new Discover feature, removal of “All Songs” from the plex apps in favor of moving people to Plexamp, removing the Gallery sync a few years ago etc.

Some people want their software to be 100% FOSS all-eyes-on-the-codebase, others just do a balancing act based on their personal values.

I value my software to be “transparent enough” in how it operates, “just work”, and hackable to some extent - if I really wanted to I can swap out the ffmpeg binary that Plex uses for transcoding to something else (doesn’t remove the Plex Pass limitation for those curious), I can hook into the server API to change ambient lighting colour based on the cover/background of whatever media is playing, I can create speakers running a Linux board to cast Plex media to, etc. But once that hackable ship sails, then I will look to FOSS alternatives.

For Niagara, everything “just worked”. No noticeable bugs, fast search, consistent feel and design, useful contextual info (e.g. next calendar event shows under the clock), and gestures that made sense for its overall UX. Using it felt less like you were using a “launcher”. The yearly sub was cheap enough that I wouldn’t mind covering for it if I didn’t get credits, and having a single person working on software usually comes with a high level of attention to detail (particularly in performance and UX) but it does have the downside that the experience may be more opinionated and closed compared to if it was a community-driven FOSS project instead IMO.

Alas, google didn’t send credits this year, Niagara made less sense for value/worth-it compared to Kvaesitso, so I abandoned it.

For me, Kvaesitso does everything in a slightly different, much more customizable way, and being FOSS was one of the things that made it particularly attractive as a replacement

velox_vulnus,

I’ve moved to Kvaesisto from the default MIUI after this post, but I must say that I don’t like some part of how it’s UI/UX is, especially the button at the bottom of the widget page, and the empty favourite container. Also, it is quite laggy.

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