nothing

An Android app that does nothing. It only shows a splash screen with the app's logo, and stays there.

Requirements

• Android 5.0 (API 21) or higher

Permissions

None. AndroidManifest.xml declares no permissions at all.

The app

• One activity (MainActivity) extending android.app.Activity directly — no AppCompat, no libraries.
• Java only, no Kotlin.
• Black background, vector logo (concentric rings + center dot), the word nothing, and a tagline. That's it.

Project layout

nothing/
├── app/
│   ├── build.gradle
│   └── src/main/
│       ├── AndroidManifest.xml
│       ├── java/rel/nothing/MainActivity.java
│       └── res/
│           ├── drawable/                     (logo, launcher icon)
│           ├── layout/activity_main.xml      (splash screen)
│           ├── mipmap-anydpi-v26/            (adaptive launcher icon, API 26+)
│           ├── mipmap-anydpi/                (launcher icon fallback, API 21-25)
│           └── values/                       (colors, strings, theme)
├── .github/workflows/release.yml             (CI)
├── build.gradle
├── settings.gradle
└── README.md

Building locally

You need JDK 17 and the Android SDK (with platform android-35 installed).

This repo doesn't ship the Gradle wrapper jar — generate it once, then build:

gradle wrapper
./gradlew assembleRelease   # APK at app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk
./gradlew bundleRelease     # AAB at app/build/outputs/bundle/release/app-release.aab

By default the release build falls back to the debug signing key so the APK installs out of the box. The AAB it produces is not acceptable to Google Play — for that you need a real signing key (see below).

Signing for Google Play

Google Play rejects bundles signed with the Android debug key. Generate a release keystore once and reuse it for every upload.

1. Generate a keystore

keytool -genkeypair -v \
  -keystore release.keystore \
  -alias nothing \
  -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

Pick a store password and a key password — keep them somewhere safe (a password manager). Losing this keystore means you can never publish an update to the same Play listing.

2. Build a signed release locally

Point the build at your keystore via env vars:

export RELEASE_KEYSTORE_PATH=/absolute/path/to/release.keystore
export RELEASE_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD='…'
export RELEASE_KEY_ALIAS=nothing
export RELEASE_KEY_PASSWORD='…'

./gradlew bundleRelease

The signed AAB lands at app/build/outputs/bundle/release/app-release.aab — upload that to the Play Console.

Building via GitHub Actions

.github/workflows/release.yml runs on:

• Every GitHub Release (release: created) — builds the APK + AAB and attaches both to the release as assets.
• Manual dispatch (workflow_dispatch) — builds the APK + AAB and exposes them as workflow artifacts only.

It uses gradle/actions/setup-gradle with Gradle 8.2 directly, so the wrapper jar isn't required in CI.

CI signing setup (required for Play-ready AABs)

Set these repository secrets in GitHub → Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions:

Secret	Value
RELEASE_KEYSTORE_BASE64	base64 -w0 release.keystore (or base64 < release.keystore on Mac)
RELEASE_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD	store password
RELEASE_KEY_ALIAS	key alias (e.g. nothing)
RELEASE_KEY_PASSWORD	key password

If RELEASE_KEYSTORE_BASE64 is missing, the workflow still runs but logs a warning and produces debug-signed artifacts (the APK is fine for direct install; the AAB is not Play-acceptable).

Cutting a release

1. Tag and push: git tag v1.0.0 && git push --tags
2. Create a GitHub Release for that tag.
3. The workflow builds and attaches app-release.apk and app-release.aab to the release.
4. Download the AAB and upload it to Google Play Console.

License

Public domain. Do nothing with it.