For over a decade, Nova Launcher has been an icon of customization on Android. But if you’re willing to take a different path — or something based on some newer interface ideas — there’s a rich bounty of modern launchers worth your home screen. Here are the seven best that land in a sweet spot between speed, control and fresh design thinking.
Why consider a swap
Android launchers have grown quickly with Material You, larger screens and new shapes. Ownership shifts around Nova’s development and lingering concerns about long-term update volatility means that many power users are finding alternatives that keep up with the platform just as fast. There are now community-backed projects and long-lived indie apps that offer features Nova never really approached — particularly around one-handed use, search-centric workflows, and foldables.
Niagara Launcher: one-handed minimalism
Repackaging the home screen as a clean vertical list (with an alphabet scroller thumb-reachable) seemed like something fresh.
I thought we needed to experiment with”endless scrolling.” What was always so magnetic about endlessly scrolling feeds was how you could push your finger and feel the lore of all those unfathomable posts under your touch. Notifications live inline with each app, allowing you to triage without opening the shade. It sacrifices granular grid control for clarity and speed — on today’s 6.5-inch-plus displays that the industry has been hyping up, this is especially useful.”
If you seek silence, Niagara’s single-widget carousel and focus-friendly design provide exactly that. On Google Play, it consistently garners high four-star ratings, showing that the game runs well and has seen rapid, targeted updates from an active indie team.
Lawnchair: Pixel feel with more grasp
Lawnchair begins with the tried-and-true Pixel Launcher foundation and then builds on it: Material You theming, icon pack support, customizable gestures, and advanced widget management. It’s open source, community driven on GitHub, and a safe haven to Nova veterans who were fond of flexibility but don’t want complexity in their life.
It doesn’t offer you every last toggle that Nova superfans may fondly remember, but for 90% of users, Lawnchair finds the sweet spot between speed, polish and customization.
Action Launcher: Smart gestures, color
I’ve been a faithful Action Launcher user for years, and its best features — like Quick Theme and Shutters — are as relevant now as they were when I first saw them. Quicktheme allows you to pull accent colors from your wallpaper—it predates and later complements Material You. Shutters allow you to swipe an app’s icon to reveal its widget, so you can keep your widgets and home screen cleaner at the same time.
It supports adaptive icons, has notification badges, and is steady maintenance. The full set is unlocked via a paid upgrade, and for something you’ll use hundreds of times daily the investment easily justifies the outlay.
Hyperion: small is beautiful
Hyperion focuses on performance. It feels light, crunchy and responsive on both flagships and long-in-the-tooth mid-range phones. You can still have the basics — icon packs, layout tweaks, drawer choices — and not have your phone bog down under bloated code that routinely plagues many launchers over time.
For free, it’s hard to beat; opting for a small premium unlocks even more extras such as app lock.
If you’re in a hurry to get your aging phone back to feeling like new again, Hyperion needs to be near the top of your list.
Smart Launcher 6: Auto-organize that doesn’t suck
Smart Launcher sorts apps for you automatically and employs a horizontal layout that lets you drop easy views of your large libraries. It customizes colors to your wallpaper, supports resizable widgets and tries to get you into a productive state in minutes rather than hours of tinkering.
Power users may want more manual control, and some advanced tools are behind a subscription. But for everyone who seeks order without implementing it themselves, it’s a quick on-ramp to an organized, modern home screen.
Octopi: built for foldables
Since foldable owners require two layouts for how the screen is positioned, Octopi takes care of that also. You can create a beautiful, compact, at-a-glance display on the outside and a roomy internal work space with grids of icons or widgets.
As shipments of foldables rise into the tens of millions according to analysts with Counterpoint Research, Octopi’s dual-layout approach would be more than just a niche concept—it’d be literally the right fit for the hardware. Toss in some speedy universal search, widget stacking and such, and you end up with a launcher that’s the first I’ve seen to truly treat foldables as first-class citizens.
Kvaesitso: search-first, open-source
Kvaesitso is a barebones, open-source launcher that places an impressive search bar front-and-center. A streamlined list replaces traditional pages, and a smart tag system enables one app to exist in several categories – no fiddly folders necessary.
It allows on-device actions (think of quick math and web previews directly from search, which sounds a lot like what you’d expect from Spotlight in iOS). Access is either on F-Droid or via GitHub so you’re going to sideload and not use the Play Store — a small price to pay for such an efficient way of doing things.
The bottom line
So there’s no one launcher that replaces Nova feature for feature, and that doesn’t matter. Vertical Niagara flows, Lawnchair recognizes friends, Action Launcher disrupts, Hyperion speeds up, Smart Launcher goes to market, Octopi smoothes foldables and Kvaesitso searches for everything. Choose based on what you care about most —speed, minimalism, Pixel-like comfort, or an entirely new way to use your phone —and you might discover an upgrade that wasn’t already on your wish list.