This was a fun project for my Galaxy S10. As a (primarily) iPhone user who uses an old Android phone as a music archive and, because Android is still cool… when I heard that someone was making a launcher based around the concept of macOS/iOS Spotlight (Apple’s universal search tech), I was interested. Plus, I like the minimal look of the launcher. I’m an old Nova Prime user, so that’s what was installed, but I thought it was time to change it up. My iPhone can really only display icons, so I wanted my Android phone to look different.
The article is worth a read, but it leaves out some caveats. Firstly, the launcher only supports the weather in Germany. If you’re not in Germany, it won’t work. The article doesn’t even mention this. (Maybe the article writer is also in Germany.)
Second, the Kvaesitso launcher is not available on Google Play. I’m ashamed to admit I did not have F-Droid installed. I always had it before. So that was an easy install. Then I was able to install the launcher. Not strictly necessary, but it provides an easy update service (assuming the launcher can’t update itself). As a part-time Android user who’s been in the game for 16 years but out of it most of the last 10, I floundered a bit getting Firefox and F-Droid permission to install apps (the former permission to install the latter). But it’s pretty easy, and you can search the settings when the apps don’t just link right to them.
To get weather outside of Germany, you have to install another app called Breezy Weather. This can be installed from F-Droid, but it also has its own repository which gets the updates faster, so I added that to F-Droid and added it. Bonus: Breezy Weather is quite nice, and it’s FOSS! I really like the iOS weather app, especially the animations, but the information is clean and clear. Breezy checks those boxes. Based on what I’ve seen, I give it my recommendation.
Fourth, Kvaesitso doesn’t just index your apps. You do have to teach it how you want to use it. But, if you use Android full-time, this should come naturally. Oddly and counter-intuitive to both iOS and Android users, you don’t swipe UP to get the app drawer, you swipe DOWN. Swiping up gets you widgets, so leaving that (you can change it) means your muscle memory is bringing you media controls, weather, notes, and favourite apps instead of a big dumb grid. You can still get the big dumb grid, and so far, I don’t see a way to hide apps I don’t care about. So that’s one of Android’s big weak points, duplicate/worthless apps you can’t always hide. (iOS actually had it worse for a while, until we got the App Library and the ability to not have apps on the Home Screen.)
But at the end of the day, with some tweaking, I now have an Android phone that acts differently from most other Android phones, and also acts/looks nothing like my iPhone. It’s nice to have both to have access to both ecosystems… or to have access to a keyboard that doesn’t straight up hallucinate bullshit, like the iOS keyboard has done for years. (I still love Gboard. Sad it sucks so much on iOS. It’s still a dream to use on Android.)
As an iPhone user, I think the biggest thing about Android we commonly hear is that it’s janky. It doesn’t move consistently from apps to the launcher and to the system UI. I don’t think Android users really notice this until they try an iPhone for a year or two and then try to go back. In fact, doing things like adjusting the animation scale in dev settings is considered a power move (personally, I disable them). But, as a decade-long iPhone guy, I absolutely do notice it, especially having a 7-year-old Android phone. (Or rather, tablet. It’s a phone but it has no SIM card or eSIM. So, tablet. At 5.8".) However, something about Kvaesitso makes it feel more right. After I set it up, I found myself using my Android phone for a couple hours while the iPhone sat on the desk. I also lost about 45% of my battery doing all that. If I want to keep this thing much longer, I should look into a battery swap, but if I can find a newer phone with microSD support, that might be the better buy. But, there’s a point here: all this worked on the Galaxy S10, which hasn’t seen a system update in a few years. If you’re subbed to this comm and reading this, your Android is probably newer than mine, and all this works on mine. So it should work on yours.
Not sponsored in any way, I read about it on Android Police and enjoyed the journey, figured others might benefit as well.
When Nova Launcher got rogue I decided to dip my toes into some non-Launcher3-based launchers (Launcher3 is basically the default launcher). It is not the only one out there, mind you (Lucid is another one for example), but I found Kvaesitso to be the nicest, especially since it allows you to theme non-themed app icons in the launcher if you’re using the material you ones.
I went in the settings and changed the behavior to open the app drawer in a left swipe. To me it somehow feels more intuitive. Also, I don’t know what I did, but I am able to use the weather widget for my location without installing Breezy (I’m from Romania).
To be clear, only the free version of Nova included some tracking. It was never shown to affect Nova Prime, and Nova themselves (or rather, the new owners) never said paid users would be affected, and it was never proven that they were. So I think everyone unanimously agreed it was only free users being tracked.
I bought Nova when it was pretty new for $3 or $4, whatever it was at the time. It didn’t hurt that my first Android phone came with a $20 Android Market gift card — the name Google Play came later, with 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, IIRC; or maybe 3.0 Honeycomb (which was tablet only). Somewhere around there. I don’t recall if I had Nova in the Froyo/Gingerbread days; I know I had it on ICS and JB. I started with Eclair.
Anyway, I think Nova Prime is like $10 now? Not good with all the free options out there, but for having owned it this whole time? If it was $10 then I probably would have paid. I paid somewhere between $6 and $10 (I forget) for Marvis Pro, which is like a “pro” version of Apple Music on iOS, or rather, in a sense the iPhone equivalent of a good custom launcher. A wrapper for a system app that adds pro features. So yeah, would have paid about the same for Nova back then as I felt it was just as invaluable.
I didn’t even know about that, I thought everyone was affected and I had the Prime version as well, lol. I bought it at some point when it was on a sale - something like the equivalent of 0.something $
you also seem to have been way more on Android than me. My first phone was on Jelly Bean
I have some good memories with the platform, but it’s not a contest. ;) I’m just glad to be able to use an Android phone. My wife got a new one and I took the old one. My favourite Android phone was the Galaxy S3, but the S10 is a great successor/descendant to/of it. I really want the Nothing Phone 6p/6s/6+ whatever it’s called, but can’t justify paying $650 right now, and the Android phone I have is still good. iPhone is boring now, but that’s part of why I buy them. I know what to expect. But I also like the joy of finding some new tech and trying it out. And that green colourway on the Nothing phone is gorgeous. I was starting to think there was a good reason a phone couldn’t be made with my favourite colour.
Been using kvaesitso for quite a while now. They had a few breaking changes at one point and i had to work arround some stuff but im very comfortable with where it is right now.
Firstly, the launcher only supports the weather in Germany. If you’re not in Germany, it won’t work.
This is not true. The default weather widget works outside of Germany.
Also, you can use Breezy Weather to get weather from your current location and it sends data directly to kvaesitso.
They mentioned that in the post, but yes - Breezy Weather is a good weather app if you don’t already have one.
Huh. Didn’t work for me. Also, it said it only worked in Germany. So, with it not working, and me not being in Germany, I took what it said at face value.
I’m not sure why it says that, it has always worked for me in Australia.
Well, good to know. I had to take extra steps to install another weather app, and I’m happy with how that turned out. As, primarily, an iPhone user (for now), I think Breezy Weather, on its own, is almost on par with Apple’s, and that’s a high bar. To qualify “almost,” it doesn’t forecast precipitation (rain). Apple does, and has a specific toggle for it — or, rather, it will in a couple weeks when iOS 27 goes public. (I’m in the beta — as a guy who used to mess with custom firmware on Android phones, Apple’s betas aren’t really betas. And they read reports from beta testers about as much as a Nintendo cares about your little brother’s controller that isn’t plugged in. No, they do all their testing in-house, and the widely publicised “beta program” is just a way to build hype before the release with influencers over the summer. Literally all it is. And anyone who can toggle a setting can join it.)
Yeah it’s quite a nice app. I use the one from my local weather bureau, but if that didn’t exist I’d definitely consider Breezy Weather.
Can also install plug-ins to use for example OpenWeatherMap - just need to create an API
Thank you for de-clickbaiting
Even if you don’t have that many apps, the option to have your widgets in a separate page, group your apps by tags and be left with a clean home screen that only shows your most used apps at the bottom is enough for me to recommend it.
For search launcher I still much prefer the simplicity of kiss. Although using kiss for a few years now makes it really hard to navigate an icon based phone like my wife’s Samsung
