ARK-launcher 0.8.3

A reliability update: steadier long-press and drag, widgets that stay drawn, and a home screen that cleans up after itself. Updating keeps your layout, widgets and settings.

Fixed

• Widgets flashing empty: after switching pages (often right after unlocking) a widget could show an empty space for a moment. The launcher kept re-sending each widget its unchanged size — at times dozens of times a second — and some widgets redrew from scratch every time. A widget now hears about its size only when the size really changes.
• Long-press on icons (home screen, dock and app drawer): the menu now opens even if your finger moves a little while you hold, and an icon starts moving only when you really drag it. Before, the smallest wobble could nudge an icon into the next cell.
• Dragging to the screen edge now waits a moment before turning the page, like dragging a widget, and the drop lands on the page you see. The long-press menu also opens without a stutter.
• One drag at a time: a second finger can no longer take over an icon you are already dragging, and pressing Home ends a drag cleanly.
• Leftovers cleaned up: duplicate copies of the same app on the home screen, icons of apps that changed their launcher entry, a folder whose apps are all gone (it can now be dragged to Remove), widgets of an app you uninstalled, and a few cases where a hidden icon, an edit frame or the app drawer could stay stuck.
• Backup and restore: restoring puts apps and settings back only into the profile they belong to, keeps your pinned shortcuts pinned, and writes the settings before the layout so an interrupted restore leaves a usable home screen.

Changed

• Place name next to the weather: it now comes from your phone's own location service. Looking it up from BigDataCloud (for phones that have no such service) is a new setting, Place name from the internet in Settings > Home, off by default. The privacy policy and the store description describe the weather's network use.
• The page arrows in the widget edit frame are gone; drag a widget to the screen edge to move it to another page.

No new permissions. Get updates from this page, from Obtainium with this repository as the source, or from the app store you use.

SHA-256 ARK-launcher-0.8.3.apk: a58f112c4802ef57f6c689505ca89d826fcd84cee58469de58a0fb8d373a2edb

ARK-launcher 0.8.2

A small update on top of 0.8.0. Updating keeps your layout, widgets and settings.

Changed

• Backup file name: Export to file now suggests a name with the date and time, for example ARK-launcher-backup-2026-10-01_08-40.json. Before, every export offered the same name, so a second backup either replaced the first or got a "(1)" added by the file picker. Older backups import exactly as before.

Fixed

• A page that looked empty could not be removed when it still held an item the home screen cannot show — most often an app you have disabled, or a shortcut its app no longer provides. Remove empty page now appears for every page that shows nothing, and removing the page clears such leftovers. (This fix first shipped in 0.8.1; it is included here for everyone who updates through an app store.)

No new permissions. Get updates from this page, from Obtainium with this repository as the source, or from the app store you use.

SHA-256 ARK-launcher-0.8.2.apk: 745cd45751a14f0c5ea7357d6c1ca18468a01e2df555385b3d01af0dd3f24b2e

ARK-launcher 0.8.1

A small fix on top of 0.8.0. Updating keeps your layout, widgets and settings.

Fixed

• A page that looked empty could not be removed: the page menu only offered Remove empty page when nothing at all was stored on the page, but an item the home screen cannot show — most often an app you have disabled, or a shortcut its app no longer provides — kept the page alive invisibly. Remove empty page now appears for every page that shows nothing, and removing the page clears such leftovers.

Everything else is the same as 0.8.0 (People widget, page menu, batch delivery). No new permissions.

Get updates from this page, from Obtainium with this repository as the source, or from the app store you use.

SHA-256 ARK-launcher-0.8.1.apk: 37d01ac0961778656ebc1ccebd215f0a554a6875ff44662a0617cd12055ed7d7

ARK-launcher 0.8.0

The People widget and a page menu. Updating from 0.7.16 keeps your layout, widgets and settings.

New: People widget (Widgets ▸ ARK-launcher ▸ People)

• Messages, missed calls and mail grouped by person across apps, as tiles: grey when quiet, accent-colored while unread (fading over two hours), quiet again when dismissed. Pinned people keep a tile even when quiet.
• Tap opens the newest message in its app. Swipe sideways dismisses everything behind the tile. Long-press: open, reply from the tile, call, dismiss, contact, pin, link a differently spelled name to a person.
• Other apps' notifications (news, deliveries, system) show as tiles grouped by app after the people, with the app icon, title and text. Switch them off in Settings ▸ Home screen.
• Tiles pack into the widget's footprint; whatever doesn't fit folds into a "+N" tile. Stretch the widget to the whole grid for a tile-only page.

New: page menu (long-press an empty spot)

• Add a page to the left or right, set the home page (its dot wears a ring; HOME returns there and the launcher opens there), remove an empty page. Pages you add stay even while empty.

New settings (Settings ▸ Home screen)

• People widget privacy: sender and message / sender only / count only.
• Batch delivery (off by default): messages from people who aren't pinned wait in the launcher until set times (default 08:00, 12:00, 17:00). It affects only the launcher's tiles, dots and status bar; Android's shade, sounds and pop-ups work normally. Pinned people, missed calls and one-time codes come through at once; turning it off releases everything.

The widget needs notification access and asks for it; it uses the contacts permission only if contact search is already on. Everything stays on the device. No new permissions.

Get updates from this page, from Obtainium with this repository as the source, or from the app store you use.

SHA-256 ARK-launcher-0.8.0.apk: 338fdabb7fed17cb2a239fc8e874e7dffb0cbd324047b2e53cc85c9cdffa491d

ARK-launcher 0.7.16

Two-line icon labels, plus the fix that makes them actually wrap. Updating from 0.7.15 keeps your layout, widgets and settings.

New

• Two-line labels: Settings ▸ Home screen and Settings ▸ App drawer each get a Two-line labels switch. Long app, folder and shortcut names wrap onto a second line instead of being cut off with "…". Off by default on the home screen, on in the app drawer; the dock stays single-line. With 7–8 rows the icon shrinks a little so both lines fit.

Fixed

• App-drawer names were cut to one line with an ellipsis even though the drawer was meant to show two: a rounding error in the label's height cap dropped the second line. They now wrap.
• With two-line labels on, icons in the same home-screen row stay level whether or not their names wrap.

No new permissions. Get updates from this page, from Obtainium with this repository as the source, or from the app store you use.

ARK-launcher 0.7.15

Widgets got a big overhaul, and a round of reliability fixes rides along. Updating from 0.7.12 keeps your layout, widgets and settings.

New

• Move widgets in one gesture: long-press a widget and keep dragging. Hold it at a screen edge to change pages, drop it on Remove to delete it. The widget itself follows your finger. A still long-press opens the resize frame as before.
• New widget picker: searchable, with large live previews. Drag a preview to the spot you want, or tap Add.
• Built-in widgets adapt to their size: the clock, battery and notifications widgets change their layout as you resize them. Optional themed backgrounds in Settings ▸ Home screen ▸ Themed backgrounds for built-in widgets (the translucent style stays the default).

Changed

• Widget sizes are calculated from the real grid cells instead of a fixed 70 dp rule, and a widget whose default is larger than your grid shrinks to fit.
• The resize handles have a larger touch target.
• The full-width toggle on the resize frame is gone — drag the side handles instead.

Fixed

• Icon labels are no longer cut off with a large system font or display size, even with 7–8 rows.
• Restoring a backup could crash the launcher the next time an app was dropped into a restored folder. Leaving Settings in the middle of a restore could also leave the new layout on the old grid.
• A failed profile lookup at startup could delete every home-screen icon.
• Reordering the dock could silently undo an earlier reorder, and hiding the dock left a dead zone where icons could not be dropped.
• Long-pressing a widget no longer also opens the home-screen menu.
• App info for a work-profile app could open the personal copy of the same app.
• A widget preview that misbehaves can no longer crash the launcher.

No new permissions. Get updates from this page, from Obtainium with this repository as the source, or from the app store you use.

v0.7.14

F-Droid packaging pre-release. Not intended for regular users; the current public version is 0.7.12.

Fixed

• Native libraries are now packaged unmodified and the APK no longer embeds version-control info, so F-Droid can reproduce the release build byte for byte. No other changes since 0.7.13.

ARK-launcher 0.7.12

ARK-launcher is now fully FOSS: no Google libraries, no self-updating, and nothing leaves the device except the weather lookup.

Heads-up if you are updating from 0.7.11

• This is the last release the in-app updater installs for you. From now on, get updates from this Releases page (Settings ▸ Updates ▸ Check for updates opens it), from Obtainium with this repository as the source, or from the app store you use.
• Google Drive auto-backup is gone. Local file backup and restore work as before. Backups you made to Drive stay in your Drive's app-data folder — remove them via Drive ▸ Settings ▸ Manage apps if you no longer need them.

New

• Double-tap to lock: double-tap empty home-screen space to lock the screen (Settings ▸ Gestures). Uses a minimal accessibility service that reads nothing; you enable it in the system accessibility settings.

Changed

• The in-app updater is removed, together with the "install packages" and notification permissions it needed.
• Google Drive backup is removed (its Google sign-in library was the last non-free dependency), together with the background-work permissions.
• The app now opts out of Android's system backup: its data never leaves the device unless you export a backup file yourself.
• Weather and place-name requests send a neutral ARK-launcher/<version> User-Agent instead of the Android default that named the device model.
• The privacy policy is rewritten for this release: PRIVACY.md · PRIVACY.fi.md.

Fixed

• Notifications widget: an app with several launcher entries (a dialer with separate Phone and Messages icons, say) now shows its main icon instead of whichever entry sorted last, and a notification that asks for its own small icon (Android 17's preferSmallIcon) is drawn with that icon — a missed or blocked call shows a handset, not a message bubble.

Permissions dropped since 0.7.11: REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES, POST_NOTIFICATIONS, WAKE_LOCK, RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED, FOREGROUND_SERVICE.

ARK-launcher 0.7.11

Reliability fixes from a full-app review.

Icons

• App icons now refresh immediately when an app updates — including icons already visible on the dock, the home screen and the app drawer (previously the old icon could linger until the launcher process restarted).
• Package events no longer trigger 3–4 duplicate app-list scans, and typing in search no longer rescans installed apps on every keystroke.

Backup & Drive

• Restoring a backup can no longer leave a stuck, unremovable empty folder on the home screen: a folder whose apps aren't installed on the target device dissolves like it does in normal use.
• A successful Google Drive backup is no longer reported as failed (and re-uploaded as a duplicate) when only the old-backup cleanup hiccups.

Widgets & UI

• Widget resizing now resizes the widget content live while you drag, and a rejected resize snaps the frame back instead of leaving it out of sync.
• Folder previews no longer distort at small icon sizes (6–7 columns), drawer folders now show notification badges like home-screen folders, and an empty search shows "No results found".

Other

• The 4G/5G label appears right after granting the phone permission from Settings ▸ Permissions.
• Removed a rare startup crash-loop risk and a double-tap glitch in the in-app updater's progress display.

v0.7.10

Telegram group

ARK-launcher now has a Telegram group — a place to chat with other users, ask questions and follow new releases: https://t.me/ARKlauncher

• Settings ▸ Feedback now lists both channels: GitHub Discussions and the Telegram group. One tap opens either.
• Write in English or Finnish — both are fine.
• Bug reports still belong in Issues, so they don't get lost in the chat.

No other changes in this release.