Nova Launcher Begins Deployments From Its New Parent Company

A few days ago, the acquisition of Nova Launcher, one of the best and oldest application launchers for Android devices, took place by Branch Metrics, a company specialized in analysis.

This acquisition has left the community of users of this application launcher somewhat restless, despite the fact that Kevin Barry, creator of the launcher, tried to calm things down in a statement by pointing out that the original development team will continue to lead, and that most of the functions that are implemented pertaining to Branch will be totally optional.

A new stage opens under Branch Metrics as parent company

The first of the Branch-powered implementations is starting to hit the searches in the new beta version 8.0.2 that the Nova Launcher team just released just days after taking over the acquisition.

Branch is driving improvements whereby users who choose their search option will be able to search for both shortcuts and contacts in the app. The entire data indexing process is carried out on the device itself and does not go outside.

Regarding the search for contacts, Branch offers a list of contacts and for each one of them the possibilities of contact found, either by SMS, by WhatsApp, as well as other possible ways, with the exception of Slack and any other application incompatible, which is offered the possibility of being contacted separately.

In any case, greater results are offered than those offered after the Sesame Search option, linked only to communication by WhatsApp, and where Sesame Search is also another of the search applications acquired by Branch.

In addition to these implementations, disabled by default, the new beta version brings some improvements in the way the shortcut icon and text are displayed. Some users consider that these are bugs included deliberately so that users move to the new beta version, where the commented Branch implementations are already.

And it is that among the restless users with the acquisition, there are already users in search of comparable alternatives in which an analysis company that wants to obtain data on user behavior to carry out its metrics is not behind.

Via: AndroidPolice