SearchLauncher

Android app that lets you search everything on your phone and on the web, and opens what you find in its own ad-blocking browser.

Get it on Google Play. APKs are also on GitHub Releases: choose app-play.apk for the same signing identity as Google Play. The older app-release.apk is only for legacy GitHub/F-Droid installs.

Website: searchlauncher.eu (source in website/)

Features

• Built-in home keyboard - Home search opens with its own QWERTY keyboard, without waiting for the system keyboard animation. Includes numbers/symbols, hold-and-release symbols (hinted in the upper corner of each key; slide while holding to choose accents or alternatives), caps lock (hold Shift), and repeating backspace. Turn off Settings → Keyboard → Use built-in keyboard for your preferred keyboard, swipe typing, or other languages. Browser fields and dialogs use your system keyboard.
• Search everything on your phone - Apps, their shortcuts, device settings, downloads, upcoming calendar events, sorted smartly by usage.
• Search everything on the web - Youtube, google, bing, maps, spotify... Or add your own custom shortcuts!
• Built-in ad-free browser - Opens web results in-app, blocking ads and trackers by default. Browse privately in an isolated window. File uploads, picture-in-picture video, and hardware-keyboard shortcuts are included.
• Tabs at your thumb - Swipe the search bar sideways to switch tabs, or up to see them all as live previews. Both work from the home screen too: swipe sideways to drop straight back into your last tab.
• Bookmarks & history - Save any page under a title you choose, then find it back from the search bar. Pages you visit are searchable too, and both show the site's icon.
• Keyboard gestures - With a query, swipe sideways to move the cursor or vertically to scroll results with momentum. With no query, swipe up for the app drawer, down for notifications (left side, or either side if your phone uses one tray), down on the right for quick settings when the phone has a separate tray, or sideways for wallpapers. Configure these in Settings → Keyboard.
• Downloads - View progress and history, install downloaded APKs, open files in another app, and delete files. Search for Downloads to open the page. Use Open a file to choose a file through Android, or Browse all downloads to open the system Downloads view. No broad storage permission is required.
• Speed - Cached search is available earlier at startup, while background indexing yields to typing.
• Swipe Wallpapers - Your background is an interactive picture album.
• Smart input - Recognizes phone numbers, emails, calculator queries, and web addresses.
• App icons history & favorites - Recently used & favorited apps are shown above the search bar. Optional themed (monochrome) icons match the theme; SearchLauncher's own icon can be themed by Android too.
• Follows the wallpaper - Theme color can track the wallpaper behind the search bar (on by default).
• Widgets - Add widgets through the search bar, resize them, and toggle visibility by tapping the background. Lock them in Settings (or from a long-press on the wallpaper) so scrolling no longer opens resize or delete.
• Voice search - Tap the mic to speak your query
• Snippets - Fast access to frequently used text snippets
• Quick Access to notification bar & quick settings - Swipe down on the home screen background to open notifications or quick settings.
• Export & Import - Backup your settings and wallpapers

Screenshots

Use as Launcher or as a Widget

• Launcher - Use it as your default homescreen
• Widget - Add the most powerful search bar to your existing launcher / homescreen

Architecture

• Kotlin - 100% Kotlin codebase
• Jetpack Compose - Modern declarative UI
• Material 3 - Latest Material Design components
• AppSearch API - For efficient content indexing and search
• DataStore - For preferences management

Requirements

• Android 10 (API 29) or higher
• Permissions:
  • Usage stats (optional, for smart app sorting)
  • Contacts (optional, for contact search)
  • Calendar (optional, for events in the next week)
  • Individual files (optional, selected through Android’s file picker)

Browser upgrade in 0.1.0

The integrated browser now uses GeckoView, the Firefox engine, with SurfaceView rendering. Supported websites can be installed from Browser menu → Install app and launched from favorites without the browser bar. Long-press the favorite to open in a normal tab or remove app mode. Sites requesting standalone mode keep Android's system bars; fullscreen apps hide them.

Favorites, bookmarks and launcher settings stay in place when updating the production app. WebView cookies, open-page sessions and website storage are not transferred to Gecko, so you may need to sign in again. The separate SearchLauncher Gecko testing app remains a separate install; use export/import to transfer its launcher data if needed.

Website notifications work while Gecko is running. Remote Web Push after the browser process closes is not configured. Passkey support depends on the credential provider's browser policy; per-site storage totals and private popup windows remain unsupported.

Building

Prerequisites

• JDK 17 (LTS, is recommended for Android development)
• Android SDK with API 37 (CI uses JDK 21; the app targets Java 17 bytecode)

Build Instructions

git clone https://github.com/ontola/searchlauncher.git
cd searchlauncher
# Format code
./gradlew spotlessApply
# Install to connected device over ADB
./gradlew installDebug
# Run tests
./gradlew test
# Build an optimized test APK that can coexist with Google Play
./gradlew assembleGecko
# Install it as SearchLauncher (Debug Gecko), package com.searchlauncher.app.gecko
./gradlew installGecko

Debug builds always use separate application IDs and names containing Debug. PR/main CI builds also produce a separate Debug Preview APK, never a production-package APK. The optimized Gecko test build keeps its existing .gecko ID so it upgrades older experimental installs without erasing their data. It uses the same Gecko engine as production.

For a production APK that can receive Google Play updates, use app-play.apk from GitHub Releases. Do not use the legacy app-release.apk: its signing key differs from Google's Play key. The conflict also applies when the old copy remains in a work profile, Xiaomi Second Space, or another Android user. See installation conflicts and recovery.

Adding a search shortcut

Search shortcuts (y cats searches YouTube) are listed in app/src/main/resources/search_shortcuts.json. To add a site or app, add an entry there:

{
  "id": "etsy",
  "aliases": ["et", "etsy"],
  "description": "Etsy Search",
  "shortLabel": "Etsy",
  "urlTemplate": "https://www.etsy.com/search?q=%s",
  "apps": ["com.etsy.android"],
  "color": "#F1641E",
  "onlyWhenInstalled": true
}

• urlTemplate gets the query in place of %s. Web addresses work best: they open in the app when it claims the link, and in the built-in browser otherwise.
• apps are the Android package names of the app. Its icon replaces the letter tile.
• onlyWhenInstalled keeps the shortcut hidden until one of those apps is installed, so regional and niche apps are welcome. Leave it out only for shortcuts everyone should get.
• aliases are the keys to try, shortest first. When the app is installed, the shortcut gets the first key nobody else uses and keeps it. End with one that only this shortcut lists, such as its name. Skip words that start ordinary queries, like a or i.

./gradlew test checks the file for duplicate ids, a missing last-resort key, missing %s and bad colours.

Releasing

versionCode and versionName are plain literals in app/build.gradle.kts because F-Droid parses them straight out of that file. Bump both, add a changelog under fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/changelogs/<versionCode>.txt, then tag. See DISTRIBUTION.md.

Known Limitations

• Content search within apps requires apps to implement AppSearch indexing
• Content search within third-party apps requires those apps to expose indexable data

Website

The marketing site lives in website/ and deploys to searchlauncher.eu via .github/workflows/deploy-website.yml on pushes to main that touch website/.

Setup notes (Pages source + Openprovider DNS records): website/README.md.

License

This project is open source. See LICENSE file for details.