Welp, Nova Launcher is officially dead. It was sold to an analytics company called Branch a few years ago, and now the sole developer, Kevin Barry, has left the company.

It was part of the contract that it would be open sourced if he ever left, but the new CEO of Branch isn’t going to let that fly. Even after he was mostly done:

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

— Kevin Barry

From the day I upgraded to Android 4.0 until I switched to iPhone two years ago, Nova Launcher was always the first app I installed on any new phone. The only launcher that ever came close for me was Niagara Launcher. But it’s really not comparable; they’re two completely different beasts.

Nova gave you almost infinite customization on top of what looked like the stock Android UI, but it was much more snappy and responsive, and it cut out all the bloat you get in most stock launchers. Niagara is more minimal and text based. Still good, but it’s apples and oranges.

It always sucks when some big investor buys an indie company and completely obliterates it. I never really liked Arc browser, but a lot of people do. And it makes me wonder what will happen to it and Dia since The Browser Company was just bought out by Atlassian.

Sometimes it feels like those big companies only acquire smaller companies for the sole purpose of running them into the ground. It’s like some kind of fucked up smash room for rich guys.

I honestly have no idea what Branch’s plan was from the start — as soon as it sold, development practically screeched to a halt. Or at least public releases did, anyway. I remember waiting over a year for any updates, and then I think there may have been one or two, but it was never the same from the day they took it over.

RIP, Nova. I’ll pour out some zero carb beer for ya tonight, little buddy 🫡