Ahoy hoy everyone!

Like many others, I'm using Nox to TM farm. Also like many others, the constant unknown of whether or not my overnight TM farming was halted part of the way through due to either an app crash, Nox Launcher new app install, etc.. was really irking me. Even just the thought of Nox installing new apps without my express permission is bad enough, but the potential that Nox could install an app, move my screen over to the second desktop where it installs the icon, and my macro potentially open up said app was enough for me to look into ways to improve this emulator.

With all that being said, I'm no noob to Android. It appears that the app install is tied to the Nox Launcher itself, so this should be an easy fix. I installed a third party launcher (Nova Launcher) and set it as default...Until Nox Launcher hijacked the default launcher process and set itself back to default. "Oooh buddy you aren't getting over on me that easily" I thought. I figured the Nox Launcher app would be coded to not allow itself to be disabled, but just to be sure I checked in the Apps settings, and I was correct. This was a minor inconvenience though. I enabled root in Nox, reboot, renamed the Nox Launcher (located in system>app) to a .bak, disabled root, and rebooted Nox again. Now Nova Launcher is my default launcher, Nox Launcher isn't coming back, and that issue is resolved.

Since then, I have not had a single app install on my Nox. I will be doing some further testing with TM macroing and crashing to see if it is more stable this way (and if so, seeing if the Nox Launcher is itself causing some of the crashes). If there continue to be crashing issues (outside of arena crashes which the community has found the cause of), I will fiddle with it some more to see if I can improve things further. Regardless, I now no longer have to worry about the Nox Launcher app installing rogue apps, or switching screens on me.

EDIT:
For those that want to do this on their nox, a few pieces of information:
1. Make sure to install your launcher of choice before you do the rest of the steps
2. current Nox Launcher is in system > app > Launcher_1.6.2_en_signed.apk. Rename it to Launcher_1.6.2_en_signed.apk.bak
3. Make sure you do not keep root on after you are done doing this. Because of the potential shady nature that Nox can bring, I would not want to leave root enabled for any period of time, especially during of period of non monitoring.

EDIT 02: Here's a visual step by step guide to be done after installing your 3rd party launcher of choice. after doing these, make sure to turn root back off.
http://imgur.com/a/9mUTD

EDIT 03: I TM farmed while sleeping and upon checking it after I woke up it was still TM farming, so that's positive results for a first test. Will test more...
EDIT 04: TM Farmed again while sleeping on my second day with same results as day one. Woke up and was still TM farming.
EDIT 05: Same results as the past two days. Yay!