[Google Pixel 8 Pro] JazonX:
Thanks! @roirraW "edor" ehT | @HipKat

Beautiful Discussion after ages. I appreciate your time and efforts on this.

1. I'm using Nova since it's inception, and just like you - I absolutely value it for the features it offer and not a single launcher has come closer to compensate it nor even to consider a switch. The amount of customization it offers absolutely fulfills my OCD. I switched to Version 8 (I was not aware of the ownership change until you mentioned it here) and the old charms are somewhat lost with new material inspired UI - but delivers the absolute same results. I haven't looked into the analytics yet, I'm on the lookout for a services disabler / or Revanced Patches to get that done. Some issues are visible such as there is not sort by name option inside folders - but it's a beta, so I'll leave it at that.

- I never backup Nova Homescreen Configuration and transfer to a new phone (Unless it's the same exact phone), as the phones I switch are sometimes having different resolutions and screen sizes where after restoring the backup, I feel the icon / font name gets somewhat noticeably distorted (Pixelated). This doesn't happen and this is not visible if I start a fresh setup and resize the icons / font sizes. This happenned a few times in the past and I refrain from doing it, so usually I start setting my most used shortcuts and then setup the rest on the go. This takes about a week and this slow setup keeps me away from unnecessary screen time on social media apps. I just kinda like it. A recent one was posted here.

My screen setup is somewhat complicated I feel. For Eg; I have 10 shortcuts outside on the dock, and each shortcut has a separate action for swipe up / swipe down. For an instance - The phone icon - tapping it opens the dialer, swipe up opens contacts and swipe down opens recent calls. Messages Icon - tapping opens SMS, swipe up opens WhatsApp, and Swipe down opens Telegram. App drawer - all apps are categorized into folders and some frequent apps are opened with gestures. (Double finger swipe up for calculator, Double finger swipe down for alarms).

2. I have very less faith in Swift backup (I still use it for Fuelio and TrueCaller), as I come from the Titanium Backup era and there were a lot of hit's and misses in the past. I once restored a backup of SMS in my Galaxy S2 (i9100) and the mms.db was somewhat corrupted. I replied to a sms restored and the response went to the intended receipient as shown in my end, but it had gone to a receipient it was absilutely not intended to hence concluded a love story back then. Apart from that; I attempted a WhatsApp restore from Titanium and lost connectivity (No notifications until I open the app) - and costed me a complete reinstall and in the process caused me to exit from all the WhatsApp groups during the second restore. Later I came to know the GMS ID reset trick. Since then I use the chat database copy paste to backup my chats. Even the most recent occurence - I backed up my fold 4 SMS from Swift and restored it to the Pixel. After restore the SMS incoming lines (Sim 1 and Sim 2) were mixed. FYI - I keep SMS from 2016 onwards as these are good records for financial transactions at times. I also lost a backup of Google Authenticator before Swift actually started warning users in red colour not to back it up. Luckily I had the security keys saved and that saved some accounts.

- And I'm one of those people who doesn't use the cloud for anything as it always rings in my head that cloud computer is just someone else's computer. So most of my backups are manual and local, and my local PC is backed up into another hard drive. So I try my best to refrain from cloud / google drives backups as much as possible. There was an instance where due to data connectivity inconsistency, a 4GB WhatsApp backup kept getting interrupted while restoring and lost a few chats there. Due to my lack of faith on the internet connectivity (Despite being in a 5G - 840mbps area) I still never update my phones OTA, and I always opt-in to flash manually using images.

Sounds mad eh?