An open-source, offline-first Android launcher built specifically for aftermarket car head units.
- Why Build Another Car Launcher?
- The Philosophy
- Current Features
- Roadmap & Future Plans
- Contributing
- License
I built this project for three simple reasons:
- No Premium Paywalls: I didn't want to pay someone for basic dashboard functionality.
- Community-Driven: I wanted it to be open-source. The car modding community is incredible, and I wanted to create a foundation that others could actually build upon, fork, and improve.
- Clean Aesthetics: Let's be honest—most Android launchers look like cheap video games, have zero functionality, or half the features are broken. This is built to look clean, professional, and integrated.
Most modern head unit setups rely on wireless CarPlay or Android Auto for navigation and media. That means the head unit itself is offline 90% of the time.
I designed this launcher around that reality. It is built to be functional without a Wi-Fi connection while remaining highly customizable. Whether you are installing this in a 2020 Corolla Hybrid or a custom project car, the goal is for the UI to look like it actually belongs in your car's interior—a true OEM+ aesthetic.
This project is currently in active development, but the core foundation is highly customizable:
The home screen is a fully drag-and-drop, resize-capable grid. Every widget pane can be moved, scaled, and stacked however you want. Nothing is locked to a fixed position. Add and remove widgets from the built-in library at any time.
A growing library of purpose-built car widgets designed to look like they belong on a dash — not a phone:
- Smart Music Player — pulls track metadata, album art, and playback controls from any local or streaming source. Detects when CarPlay or Android Auto is in use and switches into shortcut mode automatically.
- AM/FM Radio — instrument panel-style digital display that mirrors your head unit's real tuner. On szchoiceway-based units it talks to the MCU directly (seek, FM1/FM2/FM3/AM band switching, direct-tune frequency presets with memory). On every other unit it mirrors and controls your vendor radio app through its media session — assign the app once from the widget and get live frequency/station readout plus seek controls. No simulated stations or fake static.
- Speedometer — standalone GPS-based digital speed readout. Independent from the trip tracker so it can live anywhere on the grid.
- Altimeter — live elevation tracking pulled from the device GPS.
- Trip Meter — taxi-style rolling odometer display with trip distance and elapsed time. Includes a hidden 0–100 km/h timer (tap the meter label to reveal it) that auto-starts from standstill and locks in your time at 100.
- Head Unit Vitals — real-time CPU load, memory pressure, and temperature readouts for monitoring your head unit's thermals on long drives.
- Soundboard — 6 fully assignable sound pads. Each pad can be set to a built-in synth type (HORN, BEEP, ALERT, KICK, SNARE, BASS, FART) or loaded with any custom audio file from device storage. Assignments persist across restarts.
- Dynamic Weather — auto-detects connectivity. Shows live weather when online, hides cleanly when offline. No broken blank widgets.
- GPS Compass — live bearing with calibrated heading display.
Pulls every installed app, including system-level apps that most launchers miss — such as buried CarPlay and Android Auto receiver apps on head units that don't surface them normally.
The sidebar holds your most-used app shortcuts. Drag to reorder, long-press to remap, and position the entire bar on the Left, Right, or Bottom of the screen to suit your driving hand or interior layout.
Four distinct modes for head units that can't always pass the car's headlight signal to Android:
- Forced Dark / Forced Light — static overrides.
- System Sync — follows the head unit's native light/dark setting.
- Sunset Mode — automatically switches at local sunrise/sunset using offline location calculations, no internet required.
Speed and distance calculations use a rewritten GPS math layer with improved filtering. A calibration offset option is available for devices whose GPS chips report inaccurate baselines — accessible from the trip meter settings for reliable offline use.
Accent color, background color, gradient, wallpaper with adjustable dim, font weight, text scale, UI scale, and app font — all tunable from the settings menu, which is organized into logical sections (Appearance, Layout, Widgets, System).
Launch any app as a floating freeform window layered over the launcher.
This feature is currently in beta and requires the special
openlauncher-test-pipbuild. It relies on AOSP platform-level signing to access the window embedding APIs. The standard APK does not include PiP — use thetest-piprelease asset if you want to try it. Expect rough edges: not all apps behave correctly in a freeform window, and compatibility varies heavily by head unit ROM. This is a work in progress.
A clean onboarding flow on first launch explains key permissions (location, notification listener, draw-over-apps) before requesting them, with direct links to the relevant system settings screens.
The current priority is stability and universal compatibility — ensuring the launcher scales correctly across the wide range of aftermarket head unit resolutions and hardware specs.
Remaining targets:
- Advanced Color Engine: Per-element hex control for every surface in the UI — accent, text, borders, backgrounds — to precisely match a car's specific dashboard ambient lighting.
- Offline Weather via FM/RDS: A highly experimental goal to pull local weather data directly from FM radio bands (RDS/TMC) using the car's physical antenna — bypassing Wi-Fi entirely.
- Universal Theming Engine: A standardized platform for the community to build, share, and install full visual themes.
This project is open-source because it takes a community to build something that works across hundreds of different head unit models. Whether you are a developer, a designer, or just someone testing it in your car, your help is welcome!
- Test on your hardware: Install the APK on your specific head unit, break things, and submit Bug Reports in the Issues tab.
- Feature Requests: Have a cool idea? Open a discussion.
- Pull Requests: See a bug you can fix or a feature you want to add? Fork the repo and submit a PR. (Please check the issues tab first to see what is currently being worked on!)
This app is fully free and open-source, a donation isn't required but would be greatly appreciated to help support the constant updates and fixes planned based on your suggestions!
