A custom home-screen layer for discontinued Meta Portal devices — a play on Portal, and on keeping it alive after Meta wound the platform down. Immortal turns a Portal into a device you own: your launcher, your screensaver, and an app store that installs a curated catalog on-device, with remote self-update so it improves over time without a cable.

Package: com.immortal.launcher · Target: Meta Portal — Android 9 (API 28: the 2018 Portal / Portal+ and the Portal TV) and Android 10 (API 29: the 2019 and 2021 models), arm64, no Google services. Touch models and the remote-driven Portal TV are both supported.

• Launcher (HomeActivity) — a fullscreen app grid with a clock/date/weather header and an optional charge indicator (shown only on Portal Go, which has a battery). A photo-style Screensaver button sits top-left; a Manage button bottom-right. Manage mode lets you remove apps (tap the ✕) and organise the grid into folders by dragging one app onto another — name them, rename them, and drag apps back out, just like a phone. A green Calls tile bridges to the stock dialer/contacts for WhatsApp and Messenger calling.
• Screensaver (PhotoDreamService / PhotoFrameController) — a photo frame with stock-style clock/battery/date/weather widgets and a choice of clock faces (flip clock, big, bold, minimal) with size options. Point it at a folder of your own photos and videos, an iCloud shared album, a self-hosted Immich library, a network share (SMB) or WebDAV server, or any web page — most of which you can set up from your phone by scanning a QR code — or use the keyless built-in feed (Lorem Picsum, Unsplash-ready). Weather is keyless Open-Meteo + IP geolocation. It cooperates with the Portal's presence sensor so it runs as a permanent frame while someone's around (and on mains power), and on the battery-powered Portal Go an optional "sleep when nobody's around" setting saves power. Swipe to change photos, tap to exit.
• App Store (StoreActivity / StoreCatalog) — a hosted JSON catalog (catalog.json, schema v2) rendered with app icons, search, per-app detail pages (author, source, website, credit), device-compatibility badges, and an "Updates" section for installed apps. F-Droid entries resolve the current APK at install time so the catalog never goes stale; your own apps use a direct apkUrl. The store is open to community submissions — every catalog PR is CI-validated. Built a Portal app? Get it listed.
• Multi-room audio & now-playing (MultiRoomService / NowPlayingHub) — group your Portals as synced whole-home speakers with Snapcast and Music Assistant, and see what's playing — title, artist, cover art, and play/pause/skip controls — on the home header and screensaver of every Portal in the group, not just the one driving playback. AirPlay cast into a group works too. There's also a compact now-playing mini-player whenever anything is playing on the device itself. (Design notes.)
• Smart-home integration (MqttService) — Immortal can publish the Portal's state and accept commands over MQTT, so the device shows up in Home Assistant as something you can see and control (including turning its screen on and off).
• Fleet management (FleetAgentService) — an optional always-on WiFi service for managing a Portal over the network — deploy and update apps, push config, browse files, read logs — without reaching for a USB cable each time. It survives reboots (unlike adb-over-WiFi on these non-root devices) and is opt-in per device (provision.sh --fleet).
• Help tour (HelpActivity) — a friendly, non-technical walkthrough on a Help tile (and once on first launch), so anyone can pick up a revived Portal.
• Portal TV support — full remote/D-pad navigation across the whole UI, a Calls tile that bridges to the TV's stock home, and an Immortal tile that appears on that stock home so you can hop back.
• Universal installer — on the Gen-1 Portal+ (Android 9) the built-in Android installer dialog is broken (renders white-on-white with no visible buttons), so sideloading normally fails. The provisioning kit fixes this for the whole device by disabling the Meta display overlay (com.facebook.aloha.rro.niu.android) that re-themes the dialog white-on-white — a change that survives a reboot — so the stock installer dialog becomes usable. Immortal's store and self-update then install through Android's standard installer; an "Install with Immortal" handler (ApkInstallActivity) catches any APK you open from Chrome or a file manager, and an "Install an APK" browser (ApkBrowserActivity) lists APKs in your Downloads. (The kit also grants Immortal the install-source permission, since the Portal's on-device "install unknown apps" toggle doesn't work.) For Play-Store apps via Aurora Store, use Aurora's Shizuku installer with Shizuku (provision.sh --shizuku) — see Play-Store apps on a first-gen Portal below. Newer Portals have a working installer and don't need the Gen-1 fix.
• Self-update (UpdateManager) — Immortal polls version.json; when it advertises a higher versionCode, it downloads and installs the new build over itself. No cable, no laptop.
• Provisioning kit (provisioning/) — one double-click per device: installs Immortal, optionally sets it as the home screen and screensaver, and can freeze OS updates so the setup sticks. Fully reversible (Restore-Portal / --restore).

The easiest path is the provisioning kit: connect the Portal over USB-C with ADB enabled, then double-click Provision-Portal (macOS/Linux) or Provision-Portal.bat (Windows). It fetches the latest release automatically.

To build from source instead:

./gradlew :app:assembleDebug
adb install -r app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk
adb shell am start -n com.immortal.launcher/.HomeActivity

Immortal runs on the original Portal+ too — launcher, screensaver, and app store all work. There's one quirk worth knowing up front, because it's a quirk of that hardware's older software, not a fault in Immortal:

The first-gen Portal's built-in Android installer is broken — it opens a confirm dialog rendered white-on-white, with the "Install" button invisible in the bottom-right corner, so apps can't be installed the normal way. The cause is one of Meta's display overlays (com.facebook.aloha.rro.niu.android) re-theming the dialog — a great community discovery by u/keremimo on r/FacebookPortal. The provisioning kit disables that overlay (cmd overlay disable), which brings the normal, readable dialog back. The framework remembers this across reboots, so once the kit has run, the app store, "Install with Immortal," and sideloading all install through the standard Android dialog — no cable and no re-setup needed. (The kit also grants Immortal the install-source permission directly, since the Portal's on-device "install unknown apps" toggle is non-functional.)

If you'd rather leave the stock dialog untouched, set DISABLE_INSTALLER_OVERLAY=false in config.env — but on a Gen-1 Portal the installer dialog then stays unreadable, so installs won't work until you re-enable the fix. (On newer Portals the overlay isn't present, so this setting has no effect there.) Everything else works across reboots regardless: your home screen, screensaver, and every app you've already installed.

The Portal TV is the same generation (Android 9), so the same install mechanics apply. It has no touchscreen, but Immortal is fully driveable with the TV remote — the home grid, folders, App Store, and screensaver settings all navigate with the D-pad.

Newer Portals (Portal Go, Mini, gen-2) have a working installer dialog and don't need the overlay fix — installs go through the standard Android installer out of the box.

Aurora Store lets you install Play-Store apps (Spotify, etc.) without a Google account. On the Gen-1 Portal+, Aurora's default "Session" and "Native" installer modes hit the broken stock installer dialog. The cleanest path is Aurora's Shizuku installer, which installs silently through a privileged broker.

The provisioning kit sets this up for you: it installs Shizuku and starts its server automatically. So all that's left is to point Aurora at it, a one-time, two-tap step:

1. Install Aurora Store from the Immortal App Store.
2. In Aurora → Settings → Installation → Installation method, choose Shizuku installer. The first install prompts "Allow Aurora Store to access Shizuku?" — tap Allow all the time.

After that, Aurora installs Play-Store apps silently, including split APKs — no dialog, no broken installer (verified end-to-end on a Portal+ installing Spotify). Shizuku's server doesn't survive a reboot; the kit restarts it on its next run, or run ./provision.sh --shizuku (provision.ps1 -Shizuku).

Shizuku's server can fail to stay up on some Gen-1 firmware (Android 9 may kill it right after launch — the kit detects this and tells you instead of falsely reporting success). You can skip Shizuku entirely: with the installer-overlay fix applied, Aurora's Session installer routes through the now-readable system installer dialog. Set Aurora → Settings → Installation → Installation method → Session, and grant Aurora permission to install apps once:

adb shell appops set com.aurora.store REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES allow

After that, Session installs work with the standard dialog — no Shizuku needed (community-verified on a Gen-1 Portal+). For apps that ship as split APKs, the Shizuku path above is the more reliable one.

Hosted from this repo:

• version.json — the self-update manifest. Bump versionCode/versionName, build a signed release, and attach it as immortal.apk to a GitHub Release; devices update on their next check. The asset must be named immortal.apk — the manifest's apkUrl (and the store catalog) point at the stable releases/latest/download/immortal.apk, which 404s and breaks self-update for every device if a release attaches only a versioned name. Use scripts/publish-release.sh <tag> <signed.apk> to upload the asset under both the stable and versioned names and verify the URL resolves.
• catalog.json — the app-store catalog. Edit and commit; clients pick it up on next open (a bundled copy ships as the offline fallback).

Release builds must be signed with the same key every time (in-place self-update is signature-checked). Signing is configured via keystore.properties, which the build looks for first at the repo root (git-ignored) and then at ~/.immortal-signing/keystore.properties — the recommended home, since nothing in a git working tree can be considered safe from cleanup. Keep that key backed up safely (e.g. iCloud) — losing it means devices can no longer self-update.

These are hardware/firmware limits of the Portal itself, confirmed on-device — not things a future Immortal release can fix:

• No Google Play Services. The Portal never had them, and they can't be added (it would need Google's own signed software, or system-level write access we don't have). Aurora Store installs plenty of apps that work fine, but anything that depends on Google for sign-in, push notifications, or DRM may be limited or won't run. microG isn't an option either — the firmware has no signature-spoofing support.
• The bootloader can't be unlocked, so there's no root. Meta ships the standard "OEM unlocking" developer toggle, but the bootloader hard-refuses (Flashing Unlock is not allowed) even with it enabled, and there's no manufacturer unlock program. This is why the first-gen install helper can't be made permanent — root was the only path, and it's welded shut.
• USB-C thumb drives don't mount reliably. On the Portal Go the port switches to host mode and a drive powers up and enumerates, but the storage stack doesn't bind it, so it doesn't appear as a folder. Put screensaver photos on the device's own storage instead (e.g. copy them across while it's plugged into your computer).

Immortal is an independent community project — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Meta. "Meta Portal" and "Portal" are trademarks of Meta Platforms, Inc., used here only to identify compatible hardware. Provisioning modifies device settings and is use-at-your-own-risk (reversible, but no guarantees; may void warranty). See DISCLAIMER.md for the full text and privacy notes.

MIT — see LICENSE.