launcherd

A minimal, PIN-protected Android launcher built for students and people who want fewer distractions and more focus. It replaces your home screen with a small, deliberately limited surface: only the apps you choose, plus a simple todo list. Settings can be protected with a PIN.

Why

Home screens are designed to pull you in. launcherd gives you a blank, quiet one instead. You decide which apps are reachable, and the rest stay a deliberate step away.

Features

• PIN-gated settings
• Pick which installed apps appear on the home screen
• Web apps: pin any website to the home grid as an app-like tile with an optional domain whitelist, built on an in-app browser
• A TODO list
• Countdown to a date, editable from the home screen, with a configurable label and a show/hide toggle in Settings
• Minimalist UI
• No network access, no analytics, no accounts

Web apps

From Settings → Web apps → Add web app you can turn any website into a tile on the home grid. It opens in a built-in browser (JavaScript, cookies and storage enabled) with a compact bar for back, close and reload.

Options per web app:

• Incognito — history, cookies and site data are not kept between uses.
• Restrict to allowed domains — only links matching the patterns you list can be opened; anything else shows a "Blocked" notice. Patterns are space/comma separated: *youtube.com allows youtube.com and its subdomains (this is prefilled from the URL you enter), *.reddit.com allows subdomains only, and wrapping a pattern in slashes like /^https:\/\/en\.wikipedia\.org\// uses it as a regex.

Getting started

Download APK from website or build it and install it using the instructions in the next section.

On first launch a short onboarding explains what launcherd does and asks how you want to protect Settings: set a 4-digit PIN, or skip for now (you can add a PIN from Settings later). To make launcherd your home screen, open Settings (home screen, top right) and tap Set as default launcher.

Tip: for a kids' or study device, have one person set a PIN that the user doesn't know, then hand the device over.

Building a release APK

pnpm i
pnpm build:release

Requirements to build the APK: JDK 17, pnpm, node, Android SDK.

The script automatically checks for node, pnpm, JDK 17+ and the Android SDK, runs expo prebuild, then ./gradlew assembleRelease, and moves the result to launcherd-release.apk in the project root.

Release builds are signed with the debug keystore until you configure a real signing key in android/app/build.gradle.

Notes and limitations

• The PIN is a speed bump, not a security boundary. The launcher can still be left via the system notification shade or recents.
• The launcher is meant to increase friction towards distractions and reduce friction for productive work, not completely disable or block stuff.
• This repo contains some AI-assisted code.