Orb Launcher (Experimental)

Orb gives your phone a pulse.

Not a theme, not a live wallpaper, a genuine reaction to what's happening. The home screen becomes a single breathing orb that carries the state of your phone the way a face carries a mood. You glance at it and you know. Battery low, it looks depleted. Notifications building, it has a heartbeat. Driving, stars emerge from behind it and streak outward. Walking, it moves with you. Playing music, a waveform wraps around it. Tired from too long on screen, it dims and slows. Every state visible. Nothing hidden.

The colors don't switch either, they drift. The whole palette shifts continuously with the light in the room, the time of day, the weather outside. No toggle, no threshold. Just the phone gradually becoming the environment it's in.

Tap the orb and the apps you're most likely to need float up around it, learned from your habits over time. Everything runs on your device, no account, no cloud, no server.

There's also a scribble gesture for finding apps: draw a letter on the home screen and matches appear instantly, borrowed from the old Nokia Z Launcher and one of the few ideas from that era worth keeping.

Notification previews, media controls, weather, dock, icon packs, it's a full launcher. But the point isn't the features. The point is that your phone starts to feel present.

Orb is a solo project, actively in development. Not finished. Worth 5 minutes if you're curious what this feels like.

No ads. No tracking. No analytics. The only network request is your location sent to a free weather API (yr.no). Everything else stays on your device.

Requires Android 15+.