A high-performance, lightweight launcher tailored for Android TV.
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Gothwad Launcher is an ultra-fast, modern Android launcher designed from the ground up for TV screens (10-foot experience). Built with Native Android Views, ViewBinding, and RecyclerView, it delivers zero-lag navigation, rich visual aesthetics, and extensive customization without bloat.
- Optimized for D-pad navigation, high-contrast focus indicators, leanback cards, and seamless remote control support.
- Five built-in gradient presets (Midnight, Aurora, Sunset, Deep, Charcoal) plus custom wallpapers picked through the Storage Access Framework.
- Five scrim modes (full, top only, bottom only, both edges, none) so text and tiles stay readable over bright images.
- Background-media awareness: when another app is playing audio, the launcher shows what is playing and can silence stock boot-ad audio while the boot shield is active.
- Instant app indexing and rapid fuzzy search.
- Voice search modal with direct voice recognition support (
RecognizerIntent).
- Opened by selecting the clock cluster in the status bar.
- One-panel overview: Wi-Fi/network status, Bluetooth remote state and battery (when the remote reports it), volume/mute control and shortcuts into the relevant system settings.
- Bluetooth details are requested at the moment you look at them (
BLUETOOTH_CONNECTon Android 12+); if you decline, the panel says unknown rather than inventing a value. - No location access, no weather service — the launcher requests neither.
- Built-in App Locker for device, individual apps and a hidden-apps vault.
- Credentials are stored as salted PBKDF2 hashes (never plain text), with escalating lockout after repeated wrong attempts.
- The vault is enforced by the accessibility service too, so hidden apps cannot be opened from another launcher, the recents switcher or notifications while locked.
allowBackup=false: config and credentials never leave the device through backups.
- Density is derived from a 960 dp design width instead of trusting the firmware's reported DPI, which on TV boxes is often nonsense.
- UI Scale (0.75×–1.3×) and corner radius are user settings; the system font scale is honoured (clamped 0.85–1.30) or pinned to 1.0×, your choice.
- The scale is mirrored into a small SharedPreferences so the first frame after a cold start is already correct — the DataStore config arrives too late for that.
- Crash/ANR self-healing: a file-backed heartbeat plus a
:watchdogprocess, with a safe mode that stops the relaunch loop if the launcher keeps crashing. - Boot-ad / stock-launcher shield runs in a service (never inside the boot receiver).
- Options are intentionally honest about memory: aggressive "close other apps" trimming is off by default (Settings → Apps) and only runs when you enable it.
- Pure Kotlin DSL and lightweight DataStore persistence.
- ProGuard/R8 rules pre-configured, including the kotlinx.serialization keep rules needed by R8 full mode.
- A starter baseline profile ships in
app/src/main/baseline-prof.txt; it is hand-maintained, see docs/baseline-profile.md for how to regenerate it properly with Macrobenchmark.
- UI Framework: Native Android Views (XML layouts + ViewBinding), Material Components
(
com.google.android.material:material) — no Jetpack Compose anywhere in this project (seeAGENTS.md: the Compose implementation was removed in favour of Views). - Language: Kotlin 2.0 with Coroutines & StateFlow
- Navigation & Lists: Navigation Component (fragments), RecyclerView / ListAdapter
- Continuous Corners: AndroidX Graphics Shapes (
androidx.graphics:graphics-shapes) for smooth squircle cards - Storage & State: AndroidX Preferences DataStore, Kotlinx Serialization
- Security: PBKDF2 (
javax.crypto) credential hashing,MessageDigest.isEqualcomparisons - Performance: AndroidX ProfileInstaller with a starter baseline profile
(regeneration guide:
docs/baseline-profile.md) - Build: AGP 8.5.2 + Gradle 8.10.2 (wrapper pinned), JDK 17, R8 full mode
- Tests: JVM unit tests for config JSON decoding and credential hashing/verification
(
./gradlew :app:testDebugUnitTest)
- Android Studio Ladybug (2024.2+) or later
- JDK 17
- Android SDK with Platform 34 installed
-
Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/gothwadtech/launcher.git cd launcher -
Build Debug APK:
./gradlew assembleDebug
The generated APK will be available in:
app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk -
Build Release APK & App Bundle (AAB):
./gradlew assembleRelease bundleRelease
Three workflows in .github/workflows/, with the shared logic in two composite actions
(resolve-version, prepare-signing) so they cannot drift apart:
| Workflow | Trigger | Does | Publishes |
|---|---|---|---|
ci.yml |
every pull request, push to main, manual |
assembleDebug + assembleRelease (minified) + unit tests + lint |
Debug APK and reports as run artifacts |
release.yml |
tag v*, manual |
build, sign, verify | GitHub Release — signed Release APK + Play Store AAB |
build_apk.yml |
manual only | build whatever you ask for | Artifacts only, never a release |
versionCodeis derived from the version name (MAJOR*10000 + MINOR*100 + PATCH), so it is monotonic and two workflows cannot collide on a tag.- Gradle signs both artifacts (v1+v2+v3). Signing secrets are required for
release.yml— a missing keystore fails the job instead of publishing an unsigned "release"; they stay optional forbuild_apk.ymlso forks and PRs stay green. - The debug APK is attached to the run, not to the release: it is signed with a different key, so installing it would block later upgrades.
Full details — secrets, local signing, F-Droid reproducibility, cutting a release: docs/CI_RELEASE.md.
| docs/ARCHITECTURE.md | Layers, process model, data flow, startup paths, invariants |
| docs/CONFIG.md | Every persisted setting: type, default, reader, writer |
| docs/SECURITY.md | Threat model, credential storage, lock enforcement, permissions |
| docs/PERFORMANCE.md | Memory/startup budget, caching, the rules that keep a 2 GB box usable |
| docs/CI_RELEASE.md | Workflows, secrets, signing, version policy |
| docs/TESTING.md | What is covered, how to run it, what to add |
| docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md | Device/OEM symptoms → cause → fix |
| docs/baseline-profile.md | The shipped profile and how to regenerate it with Macrobenchmark |
| docs/I18N.md | String-extraction status and remaining inventory |
| docs/ISSUE_LOG.md | The #NN numbers referenced in code comments |
| docs/ROADMAP.md | Known remaining work and explicit non-goals |
| CONTRIBUTING.md · AGENTS.md | Ground rules, PR checklist, code style |
This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 — see the LICENSE file for the full text.