aLauncher

aLauncher is an open-source alternative launcher for Android TV, built with Flutter. The project is still at an early development stage and may be unstable. It currently lacks testing on real devices and has only been tested on Chromecast with Google TV.

This repo is a fork of https://gitlab.com/flauncher/flauncher

Changes from flauncher

• No firebase
• no usplash support
• ability to create a fully empty category (and use it as a spacer)
• improve the vertical scrolling when an empty row is top most

Features

• No ads
• Customizable categories
• Manually reorder apps within categories
• Wallpaper support
• Open "Android Settings"
• Open "App info"
• Uninstall app
• Clock
• Switch between row and grid for categories
• Support for non-TV (sideloaded) apps
• Hidden category names for row types (prefix the name with underscore _)
• No empty card (for rows) if the category name is hidden
• Empty rows honour the hight specified in the config

Screenshots

Set aLauncher as default launcher

Method 1: remap the Home button

This is the "safer" and easiest way. Use Button Mapper to remap the Home button of the remote to launch aLauncher.

Method 2: disable the default launcher

⚠️ Disclaimer ⚠️

You are doing this at your own risk, and you'll be responsible in any case of malfunction on your device.

The following commands have been tested on Chromecast with Google TV only. This may be different on other devices.

Once the default launcher is disabled, press the Home button on the remote, and you'll be prompted by the system to choose which app to set as default.

Disable default launcher

# Disable com.google.android.apps.tv.launcherx which is the default launcher on CCwGTV
$ adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.google.android.apps.tv.launcherx
# com.google.android.tungsten.setupwraith will then be used as a 'fallback' and will automatically
# re-enable the default launcher, so disable it as well
$ adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.google.android.tungsten.setupwraith

Re-enable default launcher

$ adb shell pm enable com.google.android.apps.tv.launcherx
$ adb shell pm enable com.google.android.tungsten.setupwraith

Known issues

On Chromecast with Google TV (maybe others), the "YouTube" remote button will stop working if the default launcher is disabled. As a workaround, you can use Button Mapper to remap it correctly.

Wallpaper

Because Android's WallpaperManager is not available on some Android TV devices, aLauncher implements its own wallpaper management method.

Please note that changing wallpaper requires a file explorer to be installed on the device in order to pick a file.

Creating a blank category row

• Create a new category
• Give it any name, but ensure the first character is an underscore _
• Select "row" as the type
• Adjust the height as needed

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