Secretary Launcher (Android)

Monochrome, wallpaper-focused home screen launcher. Replaces the system home with a clock/date, up to 8 configurable app slots — both freely movable, the slots as one block — a gesture-driven app drawer (swipe up to search, auto-launch on exact match) and long-press settings.

What it does

• Replaces the Android home screen: edge-to-edge wallpaper, a clock/date, and up to 8 app slots
• The clock and the slots can be dragged anywhere; the slots keep their order and move as one block
• Gesture app drawer: swipe up to open, type to search, Enter launches the closest match, Enter on an empty search runs a ! bang web search
• Home text as app names or as real app icons; rename, app info and uninstall from the drawer long-press
• Theme (light/dark/system), 7 text sizes, alignment, home text colour, automatic or manual keyboard
• Account and settings sync to the server (/launcher/); Reset home layout puts everything back
• Typewriter-style monochrome UI, single font family

Changelog

Every released version: Apps/launcher/changelog

Screenshots

Features

• Edge-to-edge wallpaper background (transparent window, no bars)
• Typewriter-style UI, single type family (@font/special_elite)
• Digital clock + date (off / time-only / date-only)
• Up to 8 home slots; long-press a slot to pick the app from the drawer
• Clock and app slots can be dragged anywhere (kept in the synced settings, Reset home layout in the settings screen puts them back)
• The home slots are one widget: they keep their order and are dragged as a unit, so they cannot drift apart
• App drawer: swipe up, search field at the bottom above the keyboard, Enter auto-launches the closest match, background is the desktop wallpaper, blurred (ui/Wallpaper.kt)
• ! bang search (web search), profile-aware app list (clone apps)
• Rename / app-info / uninstall from the drawer long-press dialog
• Theme (light/dark/system), text size (7 levels), alignment, home text color
• Home apps as names or as real Android app icons (profile-aware, cached)
• Drawer keyboard can be automatic (default) or off
• Account + settings sync to the server (/launcher/), settings screen shared with all other secretary apps
• Crash reports written to filesDir/crashreports/ and Downloads

Architecture

• Package: org.beowulf.secretary.launcher (single Gradle module :launcher)
• Depends on :common (account, CalDAV client, SecretarySettingsScreen, SecretaryLoginScreen) — this is why minSdk is 26, not 24
• Jetpack Compose UI (Material3), Navigation Compose
• Prefs = reactive SharedPreferences wrapper (revisionState snapshot for recomposition)
• MainViewModel <> getAppsList via LauncherApps (UserManager profiles), fallback to PackageManager
• The app list is read once into _rawAppList; the drawer only re-applies its search filter to that cache. PackageWatcher (process-wide BroadcastReceiver on the Application, not the activity — the uninstall happens in another app, so ours is backgrounded) bumps a tick StateFlow on every PACKAGE_ADDED/REMOVED/FULLY_REMOVED/REPLACED/CHANGED, and MainViewModel collects it into refreshHome(). Without it a removed app stays in the drawer until the process dies. PACKAGE_ACTIONS and onPackageEvent() are free of Android types so PackageWatcherTest needs no Robolectric (the module has none).
• launcherGestures modifier: single-pointer swipe/tap/long-press recognizer
• widgetDrag modifier: drag recognizer for the home widgets. It consumes the movement (so the swipe-up of launcherGestures leaves it alone) and claims neither tap nor long press, which the clickable slot inside keeps
• WidgetPosition: where a widget sits, as the fractions of the screen its top left corner is at. Fractions, so a layout survives a rotation, a different screen size and the sync; offsetOf/moveWithin/fractionOf do the px math (and clamp against the measured widget size, which grows with the text size or a longer label). An untouched widget has no position at all, so an existing installation keeps the old arrangement. There are two widgets, not nine: the clock and the whole app column (WidgetPosition.KEYS), so the slots stay together and one drag moves them. MovableWidget follows the finger as a graphicsLayer translation over its layout position and writes one preference when the finger is lifted; a moved widget is rendered as a sibling of the default arrangement instead of inside it. The drag handlers outlive recompositions (pointerInput(Unit)) and therefore read the screen size and the callback through rememberUpdatedState
• Default-launcher switch via RoleManager request + FakeHomeActivity selector trick

Server sync (/launcher/)

• The launcher syncs settings, not user data. One VJOURNAL collection (main) below the top-level launcher/ root holds
  • settings — SUMMARY=settings, CATEGORIES=launcher,settings, DESCRIPTION = JSON of LauncherSettings (theme, text size, home count/alignment/text colour, date visibility, home app style, drawer keyboard, rename labels, slot snapshot, widget positions),
  • app-<slot> — one entry per occupied home slot (CATEGORIES=launcher,app-<slot>) with label, package, activity class and profile.
• LauncherSync (:launcher:sync) does a full pull+push under a mutex: the server wins on every full sync, a local write is pushed after a 1.5 s debounce, entries of freed slots are deleted, ETags are reused.
• The shared account (AccountResolver, type org.beowulf.secretary) is the only credential store; without it the launcher keeps working locally and reports NotConfigured.
• KNOWN_NAMESPACE_ROOTS in :common (shared with all apps) needs "launcher", otherwise the safe-delete check in CaldavClient refuses to delete the entries of freed slots.
• The client is built with baseCollectionPath = "/launcher/" and the default empty collection prefix, so the collection keeps the id main (/launcher/main/).

Layout

android/launcher/
├── build.gradle.kts
├── proguard-rules.pro
├── LICENSE-SpecialElite.txt      # Font license (special_elite)
└── src/main/
    ├── AndroidManifest.xml
    ├── java/org/beowulf/secretary/launcher/
    │   ├── MainActivity.kt            # Entry, edge-to-edge, orientation
    │   ├── MainViewModel.kt           # account, sync wiring
    │   ├── SecretaryLauncherApp.kt    # CrashReporter + PackageWatcher install
    │   ├── navigation/AppNav.kt       # home / settings / login routes
    │   ├── data/                      # Constants, Prefs, AppModel,
    │   │                              #   LauncherSettings, WidgetPosition,
    │   │                              #   LauncherRepository
    │   ├── sync/LauncherSync.kt       # /launcher/ pull + push
    │   ├── helper/                    # Utils, FakeHomeActivity, AppIcons,
    │   │                              #   PackageWatcher
    │   ├── crash/CrashReporter.kt
    │   └── ui/                        # Gestures, theme, screens
    └── res/                           # values(-night, -de), font, icons