I wrote my own Android home screen: a list, three cards and a terminal into the homelab
If your home screen is somebody else's idea of what you need, know that it is just an app.
- Answers
- Can you write your own Android home screen, and what does a launcher for one user look like?
- Topics
- Freedom · android · design · minimal · programming · smartphone
- Full article on willem.com
- https://willem.com/en/2026-08-31_my-own-custom-android/
Summary
In August 2026 I replaced the launcher on my Fairphone 5 with one I wrote myself, for one user: no app store, no onboarding, no settings menu for people who are not me. Built in a day, improved every week since.
Full text
It works because it does less: a list of the things I actually open, three cards with what I want to see at a glance, and a terminal that opens straight into the machine in the homelab. Two weeks of Android only brought friction too, and I kept the honest balance in the post. But the phone became malleable, and that is worth more to me than polish. In principle everything now works, smartphone only, which I would have called unimaginable a year ago. A home screen is just an app, you can write your own.