How to stop Nova Launcher from stretching icons & widgets

[Mister F]

I have Nova Launcher Prime on my phone (HTC One S) and it's fantastic. It's smooth, has a tonne of customization, and unread notifications. When I got a Nexus 7 I installed it on the tablet as well. It works well, but one thing that annoys me is that it stretches icons and widgets to the point that some of them are really distorted. Here's what I mean. The first screenshot is running Apex Launcher and the second one is running Nova Prime.

Icons are stretched as well, but it's the widgets that really stand out. I thought that was just the way Nova was until I tried out ADW Launcher, which stretches the widgets and icons by default but has an option to turn it off.

I've looked for a similar setting in Nova but I can't find anything. Does such a setting exist? This isn't an issue on the One S at all.

 

[Frisco]

Do you have the same column and row numbers in both of those screen shots?

 

[Mister F]

Do you have the same column and row numbers in both of those screen shots?

Yes, they're both 6x6.

 

[balloonshark]

I have a couple things you can try.

Try Nova Settings - Desktop - Resize all widgets. Try unticking the box.

For icons try Look and feel - Icon size. I don't have the prime version so I can't see the individual options.

 

[walpow]

For the widgets, I don't think the Resize All Widgets option will help. It just lets you resize widgets that aren't designed for resizing, but has no effect on those that are.

I read somewhere that the way a launcher renders widgets is partially controlled by the launcher. So Nova tends to make widgets "fatter" and Apex (for instance) makes them "skinnier." I originally chose Nova over Apex for just this reason - I liked the chubby widgets - but now I'm finding I like the skinny guys better and am thinking of switching to Apex.

Regarding icons ... they render the same size for me, but Nova puts a bit more space between the icon and the label, perhaps making it seem bigger.

 

[Mister F]

Too bad there's no setting to switch how it renders widgets and icons. ADW has that setting and I've heard good things about the updated launcher but it has its own issues. Unread counts aren't available, for one. Too bad there's no perfect launcher!