Going Global

🎤 For reviewers & press: We bundled all media assets for this update here, feel free to use them.

Remember my closing words from last year’s retrospective?

We have some ambitious plans for Niagara Launcher in 2022 already, but I can’t tell you all the details yet. However, we’re looking forward to using the results of the Digital Wellbeing Initiative, and we’re excited to make Niagara Launcher with all of its features more accessible to people from all countries all over the globe.

I’ve already teased our plans to make Niagara Launcher and all of its features more globally accessible. Today, I’m excited to finally tell you what these plans were all about.

The Problem

Not all of our Android phones are the same: Some fold, some have notches, some have holes, some come with 3.5mm headphone jacks, and finally, most come with Google Play and Google Play Services, but others do not.

The latter has always been a huge problem for our users and us since Niagara Pro was only distributed via Google Play, which makes Niagara Pro inaccessible for many groups of users: Users from China don’t have Google Play Services on their devices, and neither do Huawei phones. Another part of our community intentionally locks itself out of the Google ecosystem and uses privacy-focused Custom-ROMs without Google Play Services like CalyxOS.

Therefore, we’ve received requests to decouple Niagara Pro from Google Play Services almost daily. So with my addition to the development team about a year ago, we’ve started building our infrastructure to make this happen.

Niagara ID — Our New Account System

To distribute Niagara Pro independently of Google Play, we need an account system: That’s Niagara ID.

Our goal was to create a login that doesn’t get in your way. As a result, our system is passwordless — to log in, you only need to click a link we send you via email. It gets even simpler if you bought Niagara Pro via Google Play since, in this case, you’re automatically signed in since we can identify you using your purchase.

But after signing in–what can you do with your Niagara ID account?

As the first feature to use Niagara ID, we’ve decoupled Niagara Pro and our Weather Widget from Google Play’s licensing. In the future, we plan to build more features that use Niagara ID (e.g., end-to-end encrypted cloud backups that actually work reliably 😉).

Using Your Existing Niagara Pro License Outside Your Google Account

While you don’t necessarily need an email to sign in to Niagara ID as a Google Play license holder, you’re free to still link your email to your Niagara ID account.

Why, you ask?

After linking an email to your account, you can use your membership on a total of three devices, even if they don’t have Google Play Services installed or aren’t linked to your Google Account (like e.g., your work phone).

That way, you’ll never lose access to Niagara Pro–regardless of what happens with your Google account. This will also help all the users who have struggled with restoring their purchases when using multiple Google accounts on one device.

Here’s how you can add your email address to your purchase.

Purchasing Niagara Pro Without Google Play Services

📝 Note: Due to sanctions, we still cannot offer Niagara Pro in Russia.

While this might be the biggest game-changer for many people, we’re not Epic Games and don’t have piles of money to throw at a lawsuit with Google.

We do our best to comply with Google Play’s guidelines. Since this article is technically accessible through the app we distribute on Google Play, we can’t give you a detailed explanation of how to unlock Niagara Pro without paying through Google Play.

However, as always, we try to make things just work in our app, so if your device does not have Google Play Services, you’ll hopefully not even notice something is different.

If something is not working out for you, please get in touch with us via our community or email — we’re always happy to help!

Niagara Pro Pricing Changes

From the 6ᵗʰ of December 2022 (Greenwich Mean Time), Niagara Pro will be priced at $9.99/9.99€/₹120 per year for new customers. If you’ve purchased Niagara Pro before this date, nothing will change for you! Ongoing subscriptions started before 6ᵗʰ of December are not affected and will renew with their current prices. The lifetime price will also be adjusted accordingly to $29.99/29.99€/₹350.

By allowing us to stick to our core values, these new prices will help us sustain our value proposition as a high-quality indie launcher without compromising our goals of respecting your privacy and staying ad-free.

We delayed the introduction of this new pricing until now since it would have been unfair to all the users who stuck with us for the last few years but were forced to miss out on Niagara Pro because their phone lacked Google Play Services.

We localized the price for each country in this picture

With the introduction of our new pricing scheme, we took the opportunity to ensure that our prices are fair across the globe even more than before.

But you can’t reach this goal by simply converting the price into other currencies since the purchasing power, and the cost of living vary significantly between countries. Instead, you have to compare what you can buy with that currency in a country.

Since there is no straightforward formula for converting prices that way, we’ve invested quite a lot of time localizing our prices for more than 170 countries by looking up representative products. Additionally, we developed our own localized pricing framework on top of our new payment provider.

As a result of that, our users from India, for example, are able to buy Niagara Pro at a price that’s reduced by 85% compared to just converting the Euro price from our home country (Germany) to Indian rupees.

As a result of heavy currency fluctuations or because some countries’ economies took a significant hit, this updated price localization can make the Niagara Pro subscription cheaper than before for some countries. If this is the case for your country, we will automatically adjust your subscription to the new price.

For more information about this, please see our knowledge base article.

Bonus: Beta-Test Web Search

As a little bonus, we’re also inviting all of you to the beta of a feature that will be useful for everyone: Web search results right in Niagara Launcher’s app search. By using the secret command /web-search you opt in to our beta and can start searching the web right away, no third-party integration or Niagara Pro is required.

Quality of Life Tweaks

As always, a new release of Niagara Launcher also includes some smaller changes and bugfixes:

• ⤴️App-Close Animation is back ·On Pixel phones and other devices where the preinstalled launcher supports it, the closed app animates nicely to its icon on Niagara Launcher’s homescreen. A behavior change in Android 12 caused the bug, and both Niagara Launcher and the preinstalled launcher needed some code changes for it to work.
• ❓ Secret commands · You can also append link to any command to share a link that will execute the command.
• 🔍 Search gesture bugfix · Swiping up on the home screen did not always open app search — now it does.
• 🔧 Automated troubleshooting · We’re now providing (better) troubleshooting tips when Niagara Launcher notices that your default launcher resets frequently or its accessibility/notification service has stopped.
• 🌍 System-independent language · Starting with Android 13, you can individually change Niagara Launcher’s language through Android’s settings: System > Languages & input > App languages > Niagara Launcher.
• ⌚ Samsung Clock · Tapping on the Niagaras widget’s time now opens the full Samsung clock app, not only your alarms, as it does with other clock apps.
• ⤴️️ Popups · More comfortable size and position on large devices and in landscape mode
• 🎵 Media Widget · If you move the Niagara Launcher past its default position, the media widget begins to move the widget up instead of the favorites down. Currently, this is not supported if you replace Niagara’s clock with a widget.
• 🖼️ App icon · We tweaked our logo to be more legible. We also added a monochrome Material You variant that shows up on supported launchers on Android 13. While Niagara Launcher doesn’t support monochrome Material You icons yet, stay tuned since we’re working on it — but with a little twist 😉

Closing Words

We’re super happy to finally release this update we’ve worked on for so long. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we’re going to rest now — we’re always in search of opportunities to improve Niagara Launcher further and further 🔍

I hope to be able to see you here soon again — until then, we hope that you’ll enjoy the latest update.

(EDIT 2022–11–05: Clarified new lifetime pricing)