I’ve settled on Niagara for a while now, largely because of the search and gesture to get there. Frequent apps are on the home screen, messaging etc, then anything else is swipe and type

I’m running nova, and the thing that sets it apart from rootless (as I recall, it’s been a while) is that you can set up whatever search engine for the search bar you want. I don’t use google, I only use my own searx instance on brave, and nova let me set everything up exactly the way I wanted it. Most other launchers assume you want google, and I think they assume you want chrome too.

I use Microsoft Launcher because it has no ads and lets me customize everything I want to customize, the way I want it to be; which is like how Pixel Launcher was when it first came out but better. Thought I would be fine with Pixel Launcher on the Pixel 8 I have now, but I couldn’t change how many icons displayed in a row or column so Microsoft Launcher is still my main launcher.

Niagara, love the way it works and has a totally different design from stock launchers, especially on big phone. Also I paid for a years subscription.

Nova bc I don’t know any FOSS launcher that can swipe an icon up/down for multiple functionalities. Also I like the inrlteration with sesame.

I use Nova Launcher because I’m used to it and there’s really nothing that still can replace it. There are plenty of similar launchers, but none that’s as feature rich as Nova. People love to hate it because it has been acquired by an analytics company, but I have data disabled for Nova Launcher, so it can’t really do anything. Even on other older phones that don’t have the option to disable data for Nova Launcher, it hasn’t sent a single KB of data in months. I don’t think it’s a problem.

I’m using Lawnchair because I wanted to change the default search engine in the search bar on the home screen. I might switch back to Pixel Launcher if they make it customizable.