Lawnchair. Anyone knows something like this but with categories?
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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Privacy
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I have never seen a FOSS Launcher that interests me as much as the default ones on ROMs like LineageOS or GrapheneOS.
I always find them visually outdated or functionally not as good. And I'm not interested in the minimal ones (which is a good part of them).
Kvaesitso. It's the only FOSS app I found that supports folders within the drawer. Well, at least it was the closest thing to it; You can select a tag and apps with that tag is shown to you. I really don't like how most launchers treats app drawer like a app dump. I miss the folder feature in Nova launcher.
i second kvaesisto it simplifies your app usage, i can never go back to the old way
Lawnchair has folders in the app drawer.
I am still confused about what the app drawer is.
A list of all apps in alphabetical order accessed usually from the lower part of the screen (either by swiping up or by clicking on an specialized button on the lower bar aka dock).
It's not my favourite but it respects my privacy - the stock launcher that comes with GrapheneOS.
Same, haven't felt the need to replace it. Basic but works great.
I don't know about setting colors, but I'm using Lawnchair because it can have folders in the bottom applicatons strip
Lawnchair Nightly; it's not as good as Nova, yet, but it's getting there.
Is nightly different? I thought lawnchair didn't make apks available outside of play store while claiming to be open source?
It's available on F-droid through the Izzy repo
Yeah i saw it's releasing some updates. But it's the old version that lacks quite a few features compared to v2. And v2 is not open source.
But I thought v1 was dead, good to see active development on it.
I am surprised no one has mentioned KISS yet. A much simpler approach to launching Android apps, by typing what you want
Lawnchair best
I use stock launcher, before I liked to use Niagara Launcher but since my subscription expired and I didn't renewed it I just use stock launchers now.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is a launcher? What is wrong with starting apps from the home screen?
A launcher is the home screen. You can replace the default with something else
Adding to the other comment. You can install more than one launcher and try them out. You select which is your default launcher in the settings. Nova launcher was a great launcher that was highly customisable and many here had it and likely the paid premium version. Then it got bought out and enshittified. Lawnchair is an open source alternative that many like.
How'd it get enshittified? Last I used it, it was essentially the same ol' reliable one, but some things randomly break when you switch the launcher on HyperOS.
I switched to Lawnchair a couple months ago from Nova Launcher, it took a couple hours to set things up as I like them and I never touched the settings again afterwards. Highly recommended
I use Neo Launcher
Is there any android launcher without app drawer like iOS ?
Hex Launcher: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.mrmannwood.hexlauncher
Pie Launcher: https://f-droid.org/packages/de.markusfisch.android.pielauncher
Similar approach in both of these
Out there opinion but I really like all of the simple text launchers In no particular order : Cclauncher https://f-droid.org/packages/app.cclauncher/
Clauncher https://f-droid.org/packages/app.clauncher/
Multi launcher https://f-droid.org/packages/app.mlauncher/
T-UI https://f-droid.org/packages/ohi.andre.consolelauncher/
Old lawnchair at the moment, have not made the switch to the new lawnchair.
i'm still on old lawnchair (legacy?) because it's more customizable than the up to date lawnchair
i keep an eye on ~~eblan~~ einstein as a replacement for lawnchair ☞ https://f-droid.org/packages/com.eblan.launcher/
i also use drag on launcher because it's genial ☞ https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/org.elnix.dragonlauncher
all these with arcticons https://f-droid.org/packages/com.donnnno.arcticons/ and some abstract icons i made
I really like Fast Draw. I've been having a problem with it in that every once in a while it'll just freeze. Þe author has offered to help, but þere's noþing I can do on Android to provide more information for debugging; it happens at random. Þe top bar still works, so to fix it I open options, open the app page, and kill it... then it starts working again. It's annoying, but not enough to make me stop using it after all þe oþer launchers I've tried.
It's small, which is one þing I really love about it. 11MB, in a world where stmps calculators can take up hundreds of MB.
ADW Launcher Ex 1.. not foss but it just worked for me for the last 10+ years
I use Yantra Launcher...but it has no icons