0.1.0-alpha01

The first published build of Terminal Launcher: an Android home screen that works like a terminal. Type a name, press Enter, the application starts.

Install

Download the APK below, allow your browser to install unknown applications when Android asks, then open it. To make it your home screen: Settings → Apps → Default apps → Home app → Terminal Launcher, or press Home once and pick it from the chooser.

This is a debug build, and that has consequences

The APK is what the CI builds and verifies on every commit, signed with the Android debug key that every machine shares, and it is debuggable. Two things follow, and the second one matters later:

• On a device with USB debugging on, any connected host can attach to the launcher and read what it stored. It stores your settings and what you pinned, nothing else, but it is worth knowing.
• A properly signed release will not be able to update this build. Android refuses an update whose signature does not match, so moving to the signed build will mean uninstalling this one first, which takes your settings and pins with it.

It is also unoptimised, which is why it weighs around 25 MB where a shrunk release build would be a fraction of that.

Changes in this release

Everything here is new, since nothing was published before it. What follows is what landed most recently.

• Home answers Back itself (#77). Home is the root of the launcher task, so a Back that nothing else consumed used to finish the activity and leave the system to start Home again, which read as the launcher reopening and took the terminal history with it. Back on Home now does nothing, the way a home screen behaves, while the settings and a focused prompt keep answering it first.
• The pinned block says what it is (#79). The applications and shortcuts pinned to Home were bare rows, indistinguishable from a search result or a listing. The active shell now frames them the way its own listing command announces a directory: ~/pinned: on Unix, Directory of C:\HOME\PINNED with a file count on DOS.
• The search results announce themselves (#80). What the typed line matches is now introduced with its count, 1 match: or 3 matches: on Unix, closed with 2 File(s) found on DOS, and a search that matches nothing says so instead of showing an empty screen that reads like a search that never ran.
• help is grouped (#81). Twenty-three consecutive lines became four named groups, apps, home, device, and launcher, separated by blank lines, with the invocation forms indented by two spaces instead of ten.
• Two more themes (#64). C64 reproduces the light blue on blue of the machine it is named after, and Solarized brings the dark palette of that name, joining Green, Amber, Monochrome, and System.
• The README reads as a project page (#75), with pictures generated by the test suite itself, so what it shows is what the launcher renders.

What it does

Two shells, Unix and DOS, chosen in the settings, with the prompt, the command names, the application names, and every message written in that style. Search while you type. Only registered commands run: there is no shell behind the prompt, no Runtime.exec, no arbitrary intent. Pinned applications and shortcuts survive restarts, settings persist, and a double tap on Home locks the screen through an accessibility service that does nothing else.

help lists the commands.