Hi everyone, I'm the founder and original developer of Nova Launcher. I've been the only one working on Nova for the past year. I needed to let you know that I have left Branch and am no longer…
Hi everyone,
I'm the founder and original developer of Nova Launcher. I've been the only one working on Nova for the past year. I needed to let you know that I have left Branch and am no longer involved with Nova Launcher.
For the past several months I have been preparing the Open Source release of Nova Launcher. This work included cleaning up the codebase, reviewing licenses, removing or replacing proprietary code, and coordinating with legal to ensure a proper release. When Branch acquired Nova in 2022, Branch then-CEO and founder Alex Austin made several public commitments to the community about Nova's future, including statements about open sourcing:
However I was ultimately asked to stop working on Nova Launcher and the open sourcing effort.
Nova Launcher has been an incredible project and has an incredible community. I'm grateful for the years of support, feedback, and enthusiasm.
Kevin Barry
September 6, 2025
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Comments
By pavel_lishin 2025-09-0911:55 > "If Kevin were to ever leave, it's contracted that the code will be open sourced and put in the hands of the community."
Forget the public statements, those are worth their weight in gold; but what about the alleged contract here? Does it not actually exist, or is it not worth the legal battle?
By tracker1 2025-09-090:08 I'm looking forward to the stream of 1 star reviews on Google's App Store explaining this app is no longer under curation from the original developer and that they violated their contractual arrangements for open-sourcing the app.
By cosmic_cheese 2025-09-093:035 reply Semi-relevant, not too long ago I started tinkering around with launcher ideas and almost immediately ran into headwinds when it turned out that the only way to draw the wallpaper the user has set in Settings is to use a magic method that doesn’t let the launcher actually do anything with the image and forces you to let the system handle compositing.
This is limiting and completely rules out implementing effects like blurs or a Liquid Glass lookalike unless you want to make the user set the wallpaper in the launcher separately. Totally killed my motivation to build further.
It also prevents your launcher from uploading your private wallpapers to servers and reading the exifs from images to datamine location data.
This is an interesting point. Couldn't the OS give access to the pixel data without access to the EXIF data? i.e. doesn't need to give direct access to the image file, just convert it first to strip the metadata.
That still gives you the image data which might be private, but we should be able to lock that behind a permission dialog "Allow access to current desktop background image" or whatever. It's a weird and very specific permission but it might be worth having.
It could, but there's other benefits as well of decoupling wallpaper rendering from the launcher - it allows you to switch the launcher without having to beg the developer (OEM nowadays) to support your preferred (live) wallpaper. It gives you freedom to choose while preventing what the OP is ranting about - the launcher developer deciding for you what's best for you.
By cosmic_cheese 2025-09-0913:44 > the launcher developer deciding for you what's best for you.
I don’t understand how I would be deciding what’s best for users?
The only reason why third party launchers wouldn’t support live wallpapers is if Google didn’t give devs the tools to render them. All they’d need to do is include a WallpaperView the dev can add to their view hierarchy that supports live wallpapers. Boom, the dev can do fancy effects and the user loses nothing.
By SSLy 2025-09-099:16 of coure the OS could that.
Why not also provide a way to deny all network access to the app? Then there’s nothing it can do with any data of gets.
By cosmic_cheese 2025-09-0915:531 reply This is how third party keyboards work on iOS. No network access by default, but the user can go into settings and grant network permission if they judge it fit to.
I think this model would make a lot of sense for Android launchers, too, given how they continually run and potentially have access to much more user data than is typical.
By _aavaa_ 2025-09-0919:32 Honestly it should be how all apps work. I hate that I can’t deny Internet access to any app.
By estimator7292 2025-09-0921:11 I'm so glad that the only entity with access to this data is Google and that open source launchers can't... render an image
Maybe I'm not understanding something here, but Kvaesitso has wallpaper blur and darkening effects.
By cosmic_cheese 2025-09-094:36 Interesting, thanks for the link. Seems like they use that same “magic” wallpaper drawing I mentioned earlier and implement the blur by setting a blur property on the activity’s window, therefore letting the system compositor do the blurring. Had no idea that was possible.
Still has some limits, though, like inability to blur specific parts of the image (e.g. under a box) and apparently the Android skin that ships with some devices disables that window blurring feature, in which case it won’t work. Better than nothing but still restricts the scope of what’s possible quite a lot.
By ignoramous 2025-09-095:15 > the only way to draw the wallpaper the user has set in Settings is to use a magic method that doesn’t let the launcher actually do anything with the image and forces you to let the system handle compositing
My guess is, this might have to do with fixed layers in the Hardware Composer HAL, which offloads compositing that otherwise (I guess) Surface Flinger would need GPU/CPU for.
By jimmySixDOF 2025-09-094:101 reply Android has gone through epochs of customization option the best of which for me was 'Theamer' phase, a long gone one-click to customize the whole UI app and lot of creative people making things. Much much better than todays root needing hacks I used to enjoy opening the phone more then. Enshitification.
By saghm 2025-09-097:14 As someone whose devices you don't use, I'm confused about why you think the rest of us should care about your cocky opinions.
By rkachowski 2025-09-097:45 It follows that customisation and individuality are incompatible with good taste. I love the idea that corporate design teams are the first and last word in style
That's a weird position to take. Are you also against people using Photoshop/Canva/MS-Paint/Figma to create graphics?
You come across super elitist.
It’s not. I’ve seen too many screenshots of Android phones with awful typefaces. Windows 98 screenshots with pink themes. I’m glad all of that is over.
By elxr 2025-09-098:18 You're free to think whatever you want about your own tastes, but do you actually think Google/Apple's tastes are that special?
There's so many talented devs/designers that have proven their ability to improve on the stock UI's on these mobile OS's. It'd be a damn shame to block out that ability.
By qustrolabe 2025-09-099:42 Whatever happens on wallpaper side under the hood on old android versions is so messed up. At some point of using my Android 11 tablet and experiencing a lot of lag when any custom wallpaper was visible on the screen (but not when default one), after lots of digging I discovered that lag was completely gone if I set my wallpaper in portrait orientation. Had to install some separate wallpaper app from google for that but at least lag's gone. Just another little example of weirdness
