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!
It’s a bit unbelievable that someone who frequents foss communities would also pay a monthly subcription for an app…
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
I’m sorry to say this but, your way of picking software is wrong. You should always look for the open source software first, then use proprietary software.
I wouldn’t be critical of someone for using Photoshop and Premiere because there’s no viable alternative for professionals in this area. But using Plex when Jellyfin exists is just wrong. I personally have a jellyfin instance, and there’s nothing jellyfin can’t do when compared to Plex.
Encouraging proprietary software makes them stronger and erodes our rights. Like using chrome instead of Firefox is voting for a future where remote device attestation and forced DRM is a normal thing. Do you want the corps to eradicate your free will?
I agree here, this is what I generally do nowadays. The exception for me is only software that I’ve been using for years, such as Plex and Niagara - finding an open source alternative for a proprietary solution is the easy part, the hard part is actually making it fit into your workflow.
This is why I’ve settled on just jumping ship to an open source option when the existing proprietary option is no longer fit for purpose (hackable, “transparent” etc) because of the time sink.
Niagara to Kvaesitso was really easy though, thanks to that developer and contributors absolutely knocking it out the park with the amazing search and UX.
Jellyfin is great, particularly for us and tech enthusiasts. For non-techies though, the first hurdle of different clients for mobile/desktop/insert-platform-here is a very tough sell (each with a slightly different UX, rearranged settings etc) and is even trickier when there are no apps available for games consoles and some smart TVs. I share my Plex server with my partner and parents, so moving to something else seems like more trouble than its worth at the moment.
Regardless I do have my eye on Jellyfin (and particularly the music apps like Finamp, since that is my personal primary use case for Plex) - for TV libraries and Movies the gap is closing fast, I believe the only major thing that is missing is the “Skip intro/outro” on some of the clients, but for music sadly the gap is only widening. It’s very much a watch-this-space type thing though as the community catches up, but I feel the sonic analysis in Plexamp and the many features built on top of that are going to take a lot of volunteer time to replicate
I agree.
With remote attestation sadly we are already there on Android: most apps require GMS even when they don’t need it, and some paranoid non-banking apps unnecessarily call Google’s attestation API, and subsequently block some actions if your device doesn’t pass.
I personally run a rooted device for full control over app backups, my device’s BMS, and various other stuff - where possible I pretty much use open source& source-available apps, as well as browser shortcuts and PWAs, where I have the freedom to perform any desired action without being restricted by any attestation. My partner has a very keen interest in the freedom offered and is actually very annoyed at the state of things on modern Android - but sadly the attestation issues and Samsung Knox in particular are big showstoppers (I use an FP3, so no “security void” hardware fuses here)