Almost everyone who worked on Nova Launcher was laid off

Nearly the entire team working on Nova Launcher, one of the biggest names in Android home screen replacement, has been laid off. The team now has just one full-time developer: Kevin Barry, the launcher’s founder.

Barry has said development will continue and he will remain in charge of the project. But the team members who were laid off have said work on Nova will have to slow down, and Barry has already indicated that he will have to “narrow the scope” of the next major Nova release 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 of the Android Launcher community for years, offering a highly customizable take 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. There used to be “a dozen people” working on Nova, Wainwright said.

The launcher will continue to work for everyone who already uses it. And while the launcher has been developed by a team for many years now, it was initially a one-developer effort. “The original Nova team, for many years, was just me,” Barry wrote in a post today, reflecting on the layoffs.