{"id":228885,"date":"2026-03-29T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T15:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/29\/androids-most-trusted-launcher-is-now-harvesting-your-data\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T11:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T15:50:11","slug":"androids-most-trusted-launcher-is-now-harvesting-your-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/29\/androids-most-trusted-launcher-is-now-harvesting-your-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Android&#8217;s most trusted launcher is now harvesting your data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/androids-most-trusted-launcher-is-now-harvesting-your-data\/\">Android&#8217;s most trusted launcher is now harvesting your data<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/androids-most-trusted-launcher-is-now-harvesting-your-data\/\">https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/androids-most-trusted-launcher-is-now-harvesting-your-data\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-29 11:45:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.howtogeek.com\">www.howtogeek.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>There was once a time when Nova Launcher was the best Android launcher in the world. If you bought the premium version, you might very well feel compelled to continue using it. Sadly, now is the time to let go.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"what-happened-to-nova-launcher\">\n                        What happened to Nova Launcher?<br \/>\n               <\/h2>\n<h3 id=\"it-used-to-be-the-best\">\n            It used to be the best<br \/>\n    <\/h3>\n<p>        Credit:\u00a0Kabir Jain\/How-To Geek<\/p>\n<p>Nova Launcher was once the undisputed king of Android customization, but its downfall has been a slow and painful one. It all started back in 2022 when the app, alongside Sesame Shortcuts, was acquired by Branch Metrics, a company specializing in mobile analytics and deep linking.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, the original creator, Kevin Barry, assured the massive community of loyal users that Nova would remain independent and that development would continue as usual. For a while, that seemed to be the case, but the reality of corporate acquisitions eventually took its toll. In August 2024, Branch Metrics underwent a massive round of layoffs, letting go of over a hundred employees. This devastating cut included almost the entire Nova Launcher team, such as the long-time community manager and other core developers. Kevin Barry was left as the sole developer maintaining the project, which severely bottlenecked any future updates or innovations.<\/p>\n<p>The final nail in the coffin came in September 2025, when Kevin Barry officially announced his departure from Branch Metrics. He had spent his final months attempting to clean up&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/androids-most-trusted-launcher-is-now-harvesting-your-data\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Android&#8217;s most trusted launcher is now harvesting your data https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/androids-most-trusted-launcher-is-now-harvesting-your-data\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-29 11:45:00 Source&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228886,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static0.howtogeekimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/nova-launcher-in-google-play-store.jpg?w=1600&h=900&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228885"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228885"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228887,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228885\/revisions\/228887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}