Anika Begay
Nearly the entire team that worked on Nova Launcher, one of the biggest names in Android’s home screen replacement, has been laid off. The team is now down to just one full-time developer: Kevin Barry, the launcher’s founder.
Barry said development will continue and that he will remain in charge of the project. But team members who were laid off have said that work on Nova will have to slow down, and Barry has already written that he needs to “trim the scope” of the next major version of Nova from what was originally planned.
“Development will undoubtedly slow down with fewer people working on the app, but the current plan is for updates to continue in some form,” Rob Wainwright, one of the laid-off developers, wrote on the project’s Discord.
Nova has been a staple in the Android Launcher community for years, offering a highly customizable twist on the platform’s standard home screen options. The app was acquired by Branch, a mobile analytics firm, in July 2022. Branch is now laying off more than 100 people across the company, including most of the Nova team, according to Cliff Wade, Nova Launcher’s head of customer relations. Previously, there were “about a dozen people” working on Nova, Wainwright said.
The launcher will continue to work for anyone who is already using it. And while the launcher has been developed by a team for many years now, it was initially the work of a single developer. “The original Nova team, for many years, was just me,” Barry wrote in a post today, reflecting on the layoffs.
