TileShell

TileShell rebuilds the Windows Phone / Windows 10 Mobile Start screen on Android — live tiles, widget stacks, and all — coded from scratch in Kotlin to be faithful to the original. No accounts. No analytics. No ads. Everything stays on your device.

★ LIVE TILES
Clock with date, weekday, and your real next alarm. Live weather with temperature, forecast, and high/low. Next calendar event. Now-playing with album art and transport controls — works with any music app, or pin a dedicated music tile. People mosaic that cycles contact photos. Photos slideshow. Notification counts and message previews on every app tile. All flip on a gentle cycle; pauses automatically in battery saver.

★ NOTIFICATIONS
Unread count badge on every pinned tile. Notification tiles flip to cycle through each pending message — sender, photo, and snippet. A closed folder shows both its combined total and which app inside actually has something pending. Unpinned apps with notifications appear in App List Recent with a badge count. Works with any app, no configuration needed.

★ WIDGET STACKS
Merge two Large (3×3) tiles into a swipeable full-size carousel, or open a folder and choose "make stack · wide" or "· large" — "keep as folder" sits right alongside so you're never one accidental tap from converting. Each member keeps its own colour and shows its own notification badge as it rotates. Every live face stays interactive inside. Swipe near the right edge to flip members; swipe anywhere else scrolls Start as normal.

★ START SCREEN
4, 5, or 6 columns. Small, Medium, Wide, and Large (3×3) tiles on every grid size. Long-press to enter edit mode: drag, merge into folders, resize, recolour per tile or from the app's own icon, or unpin. Lock the layout from Personalize so nothing moves by accident. Landscape mode puts the feed and Start side by side.

★ QUICK SEARCH
Two-finger swipe down on Start. Search apps, contacts, and the web in one gesture. Long-press a contact to call, message, or pin it to Start. Choose your search engine — Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity.

★ EDGE STRIP
A quick-launch bar along the bottom of the screen. Search on the left, favourite apps in the centre, recent apps on the right. Collapses to a thin handle when not in use.

★ FEED PAGE (swipe right)
Live weather card, today's calendar agenda, now-playing, and a resizable Android widget slot. News tab with RSS articles across 8 categories. Pick any number of news regions — India plus ~20 other countries — defaulting to your device's own. Add any custom RSS or Atom feed.

★ APP LIST (swipe left)
Alphabetical grid with A–Z jump grid and instant search. Recent and newly-installed apps at the top with badge counts, even unpinned. Long-press to pin, hide, or uninstall.

★ PERSONALIZATION
14 accent colours · per-tile colour override · colour from the app's own icon · dark/light themes · glass tiles tinted by each tile's own colour · blur · wallpaper-behind-tiles mode · 6 gradient wallpapers · custom photo wallpaper · slideshow · daily Bing wallpaper with history · corner radius · gradient fill · 3 font styles · adjustable tile spacing · lock layout · quick "set as default launcher" · built-in guide.

★ BACKUP & RESTORE
Auto-save on a schedule. Browse a visual history of snapshots and restore any version. Export to a file — save it to Google Drive to restore on your next device.

★ SCREEN LOCK
Long-press the gear icon to lock the screen instantly. Uses the Accessibility API so biometric unlock (fingerprint / face) is preserved.

★ PRIVACY FIRST
No accounts. No analytics. No ads. All data stays on your device. Only weather requests leave (Open-Meteo, no API key), and only when you grant location permission.

Loved the Windows Phone Start screen and Live Tiles? TileShell brings that Metro-style launcher experience back to your Android phone — built by one developer who missed it too.

Requires Android 8.0 (API 26) or higher.