GlyphWorks for Nothing

Your Nothing phone has a grid of LEDs on its back. GlyphWorks makes it interactive.

A catalogue of toys draws on the Glyph Matrix: a clock, a compass, the phase of the moon, the sun's arc across your sky, a spirit level, a music visualiser that moves with whatever is playing, dice, a coin flip, an endless runner, and a timer that drains like an hourglass. Then a pixel editor, where you draw your own — still or animated, frame by frame — and play it on the matrix like any other toy. Designs are ordinary files: keep them, share them, import one somebody else drew.

WHY IT NEEDS AN ACCESSIBILITY SERVICE

Toys need a button, and on the Phone (4a) Pro the best one is the Essential Key. Android hands hardware key presses to accessibility services and to nothing else — it is also the only route that still works on the lock screen and the Always-On Display. So GlyphWorks ships one, for that and nothing else. It is declared such that it can't retrieve your screen's contents, so the system never gives them: it sees key presses, not what you are looking at. Press once to act on the current toy, twice to switch toys, three times to go home.

OPEN SOURCE, SO YOU CAN CHECK INSTEAD OF TRUSTING

This app ships with no INTERNET permission. It cannot phone home because it has no way to. No accounts, no analytics, no ads, no trackers. Every claim on this page is readable in the source: AGPL-3.0, https://github.com/linuxct/glyphworks.

Android will list microphone among the permissions, and your phone may show the mic indicator while the visualiser runs. That is the price of reading the audio your phone is already playing: the framework requires the microphone permission for it, and Android counts it the same way. Nothing listens to the room, nothing is recorded, and with no INTERNET permission nothing could be sent anywhere regardless.

For Nothing Phone (3) and Phone (4a) Pro. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Nothing Technology Limited.