Commonplace 0.4.0

Commonplace is an offline research assistant for Android. It answers from Wikipedia and other reference text on the phone and cites its sources. The app has no INTERNET permission.

Changes since 0.3.2

• Faster answers with Ling. On 9 demanding prompts on a Pixel 10, the first word came 12.7% sooner, against a build that already had the llama.cpp patches. Total time fell from 173 s to 142 s, partly because those answers came out 12% shorter. These runs were not interleaved with that build. Across 142 questions the answers are about 8% shorter.
• llama.cpp b12032 with speed patches. In llama-bench on a Pixel 10, Ling's prefill is 50% faster on a new prompt and about 2 times faster with the system prompt cached. Its decode with that prompt cached is about 60% faster, and MiniCPM's about 30%.
• Gemma starts sooner on a Pixel 10. For the first question of a chat, the median first word went from 1.87 s to 1.28 s, with the same decode speed.
• Read aloud. A speaker button under each answer reads it aloud, on the phone. By default the app uses the phone's own offline voice. The optional Read aloud voice pack (tts-en.tar, 65 MB) adds a bundled English voice, Phonon. Choose it in Settings, under Read aloud. It needs an arm64 phone.
• Better how-to answers. A question that starts with "How do I", "How can I" or "How to" gets the steps in order. The model writes the method it knows and checks it against the sources, which win for health and safety steps. With Ling, the first version of this prompt raised Claude's grade on 34 how-to questions from 4.18 to 4.90 of 10. Ling's final prompt scored the same on 29 other questions, with more numbered lists and about 2.8 times as many citations. With Gemma the average stayed the same, and the first-aid answers got more correct. Steps that no source supports show as unverified.
• Better search and evidence with Ling. A small learned scorer merges keyword and semantic results, and a trained head picks one connected window from each passage. Evidence is shorter, with no measurable quality change. Gemma and MiniCPM failed the release gate with these changes, so they keep the old search.
• Pack updates. When this version of the app lists a newer build of a pack you have, the Library shows it under Updates. The app has no internet access, so it learns of new builds only from a new app version.
• Wikibooks without folk remedies. The Reference shelf now leaves out the Wikibooks alternative-medicine books. Their home remedies, such as raw onion on a burn, reached first-aid answers. After the update, the Library lists the Reference shelf under Updates: download it again (2.0 GB) and install it over the old one.
• Follow-up requests. With Ling, the app recognizes more requests to rewrite an answer, such as "shorter" or "as a list".
• Ling no longer stays loaded while the app is hidden. Android 17 limits a hidden app to 3 GiB, and Ling holds about 5 GB. The app now unloads Ling when it goes off screen, or when a running answer ends, and loads it again when it comes back. Gemma and MiniCPM stay loaded.
• Think it through is now one of the follow-up chips, so it no longer covers the answer's buttons.

Install 0.4.0 over any earlier version. The installed packs stay.

Known issues

• Ling's answer to "How do I fix a squeaky door hinge?" got worse: it can give door-fitting steps instead of the fix.
• Ling's answer to "Which country won the Eurovision Song Contest 2025, and with which song?" names the singer instead of the country, and it gives the wrong song.
• Until you install the new Reference shelf, Ling's answer to "How do I treat a minor burn at home?" can suggest a slice of onion. The source is a Wikibooks page that the new shelf removes. With the new shelf, the answer has no onion and the evidence has none of the removed pages, on all three models on the desktop.
• A citation can point to the wrong article, so a higher citation count does not prove that each citation is right.
• Claude did not grade the answers from Gemma's new NPU path. In the app, Gemma passed canary 12 of 12 and abstention 26 of 30.

Install

1. Download commonplace-0.4.0.apk below on an Android phone (64-bit ARM, Android 12 or later) and install it.
2. Open Commonplace. The Get started card lists the files for your phone. Tap Open Library, and under Get more tap each file and then Download. The browser saves commonplace-starter.tar (11.3 GB, 12 GB phones) or commonplace-starter-small.tar (8.1 GB, 8 GB phones) from Hugging Face. On a Pixel 10, also download Gemma 4 E2B (Tensor G5) (3.1 GB).
3. Also download the Reference shelf (commonplace-breadth.tar, 2.0 GB). It adds travel guides, textbooks, how-to guides and medical pages.
4. Tap Install from Downloads and select the files. The app checks each file's SHA-256 while it copies.

SHA-256 of the APK: d775acc29fd493795c08b050c40e9dbf3b56aefe67a6e7b32e15737c4ba9bf8f (also in commonplace-0.4.0.apk.sha256). Full history: CHANGELOG.