Nova Launcher: Development team dismissed, project still alive

For fans of freedom of choice and innovative operating concepts on Android, an era is coming to a surprising end. The new owners of the popular Nova Launcher have basically kicked out the entire development team. TeslaCoil Inc.

Nova Launcher now has only one developer

Around two years after Branch Metrics took over the small software company behind the Nova Launcher, which is very popular with Android users, the “new” owners have decided to take a drastic step. As part of extensive job cuts, the company, which is apparently not doing particularly well overall, has also laid off almost the entire team behind the launcher. Branch Metrics laid off more than 100 employees on August 7, 2024, affecting all areas of the company, Cliff Wade, who worked for many years as support manager for the Nova Launcher, said in the Discord channel of the team. Wade and many of his colleagues were also fired after he himself had worked on the project for more than eight years.

Branch Metrics actually specializes in providing developers with solutions for collecting usage statistics in their apps. Branch currently only employs a single developer for the Nova Launcher, while the entire support team and all other developers have been laid off, it is said. This is Kevin Barry, who originally created the Nova Launcher. Apparently he is now going to continue the project alone.

Project to be continued, albeit at a slower pace

Shortly after the layoffs were announced, the community was already expressing great disappointment. The developers of competing products such as the Niagara Launcher and the Smart Launcher also expressed their regret. Branch Metrics is apparently justifying the layoffs internally by saying that they have to drastically reduce costs. Apparently there are no plans to stop selling the Nova Launcher. The only remaining developer, Kevin Barry, explained this according to a Reddit/Discord post that he would now have to carry on alone.

This of course means that work is progressing more slowly, he confirmed. Nevertheless, Barry wants to provide the first builds of Nova Launcher 8.1 shortly. The launcher is still available in both the free edition, which has already been downloaded over 50 million times, and the Prime Edition, which costs 5.25 euros, via the Google Play Store.

The Nova Launcher has long been an extremely popular alternative launcher for Android, allowing users to make countless small and large adjustments. Recently there has been criticism from time to time about a large number of bugs that arose with the last major updates and meant that the launcher could, for example, unexpectedly but with great regularity simply freeze for some users.