When comparing Nova Launcher Prime vs F-Droid, the Slant community recommends F-Droid for most people. In the question“What are the most useful Android phone apps?” F-Droid is ranked 1st while Nova Launcher Prime is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose F-Droid is:
Free and open source applications that are not for profit
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Has a more customizable stock Android experience
Nova Launcher provides an experience that's similar to stock Android, but adds multiple customization options. Customization ranges in ways that interactions and the user interface can be changed both aesthetically and functionally.
Pro Fast
Speed of Nova Launcher is one of the app's key points. Even with a lot of widgets Nova Launcher performs speedy.
Pro Drawer style options
Options include horizontal pages, vertical scrolling or list. The user is also able to adjust the background transparency. This way the users drawer can look unique while also offering more or less apps on the page depending on their preference.
Pro Custom grid size
From the Nova Settings menu, users can create a custom grid size for their desktop and app drawer, up to a maximum of 12 columns and rows. Discriminating users can also adjust the size of the margins on the top, bottom, left and right. This allows for users to set how many widgets and apps can fit on these screens.
Pro Custom icon packs
Not all custom launchers allow custom icon packs. Nova supports most custom icon packs that are in the Play Store.
Pro Infinite home screen scroll
Turning on infinite scrolling allows the user to move seamlessly among all of their home screens, rather than having to scroll backward when the last page is reached. This proves particularly useful if the user has a large number of homescreens. Infinite scrolling can also be enabled in the app drawer.
Pro Extra dock pages
There are extra bottom row dock pages accessible when swiping left or right on the dock. In Nova's settings there is support for a maximum of five dock pages and a minimum of one.
This way you can set up to 25 shortcuts in the dock that can be scrolled though, leaving plenty of room on the home screen for widgets and other apps.
Pro Tapping & swiping a shortcut can have different results
Nova has the ability to add an assortment of action shortcuts to the home-screen which can be performed when swiping on particular areas or icons (as opposed to when tapping).
Pro Folders in the app drawer
Nova Launcher has the ability to add folders into the app drawer making for easy sorting of many apps.
Pro Can automatically sort inside of folders alphabetically
The user can sort their folders in the drawer and home-screen alphabetically.
Pro Tablet support
The app drawer and widgets take full advantage of a tablets extra screen real estate.
Pro Outstanding widget support
With the custom grids, most widgets can be sized to specifications which give added control over Android home screens.
Pro Allows hiding the status bar
Within Nova's setting the user can set the notification bar to stay hidden, allowing for more screen real estate.
Pro Desktop lock
It has an option to lock the icons and widgets in place as well as locks out the ability to delete apps, preventing accidental rearranging or deletions.
Pro Folder contents synced between drawer and homescreen
- Create a folder in the drawer.
- Drag the folder from the drawer to a home screen.
- Add more items to the drawer folder.
- The item gets added automatically to the home screen folder (because it is the same folder).
In addition, the user can set a custom icon for the folder (or for each shortcut).
Pro Google widget customizations
Pro Sesame Shortcuts integration
Pro Gesture support
Use gestures (swipe up, double tap, etc.) to easily launch apps.
Pro Stable
Solid performance for getting work (and play) done, no crashes, no slow downs.
Pro Useful visual customization options
Allows you to customize scroll effects, scroll speeds, animation speed, app animations, gestures.
All of these options allow for very individualistic differences in how the launcher performs and looks, making for a great way to set ones phone apart from others.
Pro A free version available
A free version, Nova Launcher is available, but it lacks gestures, unread counts, custom drawer groups, ability to hide apps from the app drawer, icon swipes and additional scroll effects.
Pro Backup option available.
Users can save their configuration in a backup file and quickly restore it.
Pro Unread counts
Nova Launcher Prime offers unread counts for all supported apps, a feature not available on all launchers. Although it requires the free installation of TeslaUnread.
What TeslaUnread does is add unread count numbers to certain application icons in ones application drawer and home screen, giving a quick overview of how many unread notifications they have in that supported application.
Pro Non-profit
Free and open source applications that are not for profit
Pro All titles are free and open source
All apps and games on F-Droid are open source (FOSS), making for a complete store resource for users who want to use only open source software on their device.
Pro All apps have no ads nor tracking
This alone can be a great reason to use the apps available on F-Droid, but there is also the fact that this can increase battery life due to tracking and ads never requiring a data connection, since they are not present.
Pro Multiple repository sources
You have more than one source of apps and updates and local repository too
Pro Highlights 'anti features'
Features that are often considered undesirable by users and the open source community are highlighted. This could be advertising or connecting to non-free services
Pro Previous versions of apps remain available after updates
If you don't like to an app after an update, you can download the previous version again. This is not possible on GooglePlay.
Pro File sizes are shown
For those running out of room, the size of the APK is always shown.
Pro F-Droid compiles all packages
F-Droid compiles all the packages themselves ensuring a high level of security. Other stores just allow the developer to upload the app already compiled, meaning anything malicious could be in the app.
Cons
Con Lacks automatic backup
There is no way to automatically back up settings or content. Reinstalling the launcher on the same device will lose all settings and content.
Con Overwhelming at first
Nova Launcher offers such a huge amount of customization that at first it is quite a bit overwhelming. There are settings everywhere and other launchers offer more of a step-by-step setup process. Nova Launcher could take you hours to set up how you like it. On the other hand the pure amount of settings allows you to set it up almost exactly how you like it.
Con Notification count not included
Notification count need tesla Unread app to be installed
Con unable to inherit icon size on dock - dekstop - drawer
you need to set icon size separately on dock - dekstop - drawer
Con Less icon packs
This launcher has less icon packs. The system icons it has, are not HD quality.
Con Memory utilisation is a bit high
With all of the features and options Nova Launcher offers there is an understandable loss of RAM, though it could always be optimized better.
Con No ratings/comments/number of downloads
All apps are presented equally. It is difficult to judge an app's quality/popularity before trying it. On the upside, descriptions are fair (written by the F-Droid maintainers, not by the app authors).
Con Not all apps have screenshots
It can be difficult to tell what an app is like without installing it.
Con Small selection
F-Droid has a small selection of apps when compared to other major Android markets. This is due to every app being open source and given away for free, something not many people are willing to do with their time and creations.
Con It doesn't have all the open source apps
There are many open source apps that aren't available on F-Droid due to their authors not making it available on that particular app store. One example is Omni Noted, which is on the Play Store but not F-Droid.
Con Descriptions are only available in English
Though the store app is multilingual, the app descriptions are only in English, meaning you must know English to find an app, even if the app is supposed to be multilingual.
Con A lot of apps lack polish
Since every app on F-Droid is FOSS and released for free, many of them aren't as polished compared to other markets and their paid app selections.
Con F-Droid bans Gab for being a “free speech zone” that will “tolerate all opinions”
F-Droid is just another liberal marxist echo chamber. It silences, bans, any opinion that deviates from their "progressive" marxist narrative.
Con It's not a good alternative for Google Play
Most useful softwares are not available on this platform so we can't call it an adequate alternative.
Con Updates are not automatic for non root users
You have to click the updates one-by-one in order to make them happen. If user has rooted their device automatic updates are possible, the app needs to be converted to a system app.
Con Most applications are outdated/deprecated
Most applications (80% of them) haven't been updated for more than 4 years.