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