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[fraenki]

Hi @TrianguloY 👋
Your effort to revive Lightning Launcher is much appreciated! I'm aware of the timeline you've posted on the forum, but I'm proposing something different here... :)

When a project has been inactive for that long, I'd imagine it to be pretty hard to regain attention and awareness. So I'm proposing to release a new version on the Play Store just with updated URLs (pointing to GitHub) and an announcement, that it's now an Open Source project. Although there are no code changes, this would definitely bring much-needed attention to this project – and maybe also some code contributions.

Additionally (or as an alternative?) you may release the current version on F-Droid, because this seems to be a good place for open source launchers.

[TrianguloY]

My main concern is that Play Store forbids publishing apps that doesn't work and use an old android version, so just changing a couple strings and publishing is not possible. That's why my step 2 was to make sure the app compiles with the newer versions.

The play store version is also still in Pierre's account, and I'd rather not bother him anymore (at least for now). Changing the description could be an easy solution, not sure if play store allows doing it with old apps though.
The f-droid may be a solution too, but that was already on my step 3.

In any case, since anyone can modify it now, if someone wants to try they are more than welcomed to do so, and share it back for all of us to benefit!

[cheeseonamonkey]

I am also interested in contributing! I'm pretty familiar with the application and the API already, and have a few useful ideas.

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My main concern is that Play Store forbids publishing apps that doesn't work and use an old android version, so just changing a couple strings and publishing is not possible. That's why my step 2 was to make sure the app compiles with the newer versions.

I go through a lot of devices (mostly Pixels) and Lightning Launcher certainly hasn't been defunct on any of my 6+ phones - even if it felt much less stable on newer devices (and one especially in particular).

The play store version is also still in Pierre's account, and I'd rather not bother him anymore (at least for now). Changing the description could be an easy solution, not sure if play store allows doing it with old apps though. The f-droid may be a solution too, but that was already on my step 3.

I'd love to contribute code, but managing play store listings is not my area of expertise.

Perhaps until we have a significant number of user-noticeable changes in a fork, we should just leave it a sort of "community edition"?

Even though Lightning Launcher recently went open source, it is still making Pierre $4.99 per install. But Pierre going out of his way to open source it at all is certainly a nod for anyone (us) to legally/ethically do whatever we want with the code.

I just think it's at least impractical to have two separate Play Store listings - basically identical to each other. There is also the fact that the original developer only gets paid for one of those listings - even though, as I've mentioned, we do have his blessing.

@pierrehebert

[pierrehebert]

In fact the app is still listed on the Play Store but nobody can buy it. At some point I stopped accepting Google's agreement and conditions, and as a consequence my account basically get locked. I cannot modify or unpublish applications until I accept the conditions. New users cannot pay and download the app, in app purchases are disabled too. So to be clear, I don't earn money at all, and quite fortunately this remove possible conflicts with publishing the app elsewhere.
Publishing new versions of the app on the Play Store also means code upgrade and (from what I recall) quite hard requirements in terms of SDK support.

As for myself I don't wish to deal with Play Store constraints yet. Managing the listing is already a lot of work. At the moment I would rather publish the app on F-Droid or similar but probably some code maintenance should be done first, at least to bring the app to a SDK level not too old and solve some basic compatibility issues with newest devices.

[Bushmills]

Life sign received, acknowledged and happy about. Thank you, Pierre, for re-releasing Lighting Launcher as free software.

[shundred]

Still using Lightning Launcher on my phone

[StarPrince500]

Looking forward to updating my favorite launcher! What I miss the most is switching between light and dark themes

[Einixx]

That is great news. Thanks @TrianguloY for keeping my fav launcher alive and thanks to @pierrehebert for the initial work.
I noticed a few years ago that there are no more updates and thought maybe it could be open sourced. But life got in the way, moving to another country and all. Today I gave it another go to find out what happened, I am still using it on all my devices, but worried, that new Android versions might not allow older apps.
Being just a hobbyist in Android coding, I might not be able to contribute to the public. But it certainly feels good to know that someone cares about this wonderful launcher and it hopefully will be around (functional) for future Android releases
Thanks