notreal.OS

A phone made from scratch on top of mainline Linux, running on a Nothing Phone (1) ("Spacewar", Snapdragon 778G+) with postmarketOS and Phosh.

The apps, the shell and the hardware fixes in this repo were built together with Claude Code, on the phone itself, in about ten days.

Experimental. This is one person's daily phone, not a finished distribution. Expect rough edges, and don't flash anything you can't restore.

All screenshots are taken in a sandbox with made-up data (tools/shots).

Apps

All apps are Python + GTK4/libadwaita, sized for a phone, with the main controls on the left (the author is left-handed).

App	What it does
notreal.cam	12 MP photos, tap to focus, lens switch, FILM mode, video
notreal.mail	Swipeable mail for Gmail and Microsoft 365, spam/trash tabs, notifications
notreal.chat	Chats over Matrix bridges (WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram) and SMS, voice messages, GIFs
notreal.phone	Dialer, recent calls and the call screen (GNOME Calls as the engine)
notreal.calendar	Google, Outlook and Microsoft 365 calendars via Evolution Data Server
notreal.contacts	Google contacts: call, message, WhatsApp, mail
notreal.gallery	Photos, with Google Photos backup and import
notreal.edit	Crop, curves, color, blur, vignette and markup, save a copy or share
notreal.link	Light web viewer for links opened from chat and mail
notreal.share	Send files to a chat or a new mail
notreal.sound	Separate media and notification volume, ring/vibrate/silent, DAC or speaker output
notreal.player	Navidrome music client with a spinning vinyl (or a cassette), animated covers, bit-perfect USB DAC output, offline songs. Installs on any Linux on its own
notreal.maps	Google maps, places and routes with GPS and offline voice navigation
notreal.tube	YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Vimeo in one feed and search, no accounts, streamed by the PC (not affiliated with any of them)
notreal.weather	Open-Meteo forecasts, rain radar, air quality and pollen, saved places and GPS
notreal.calc	Left-handed calculator with scientific keys
notreal.clock	Alarms, timer and stopwatch that ring from deep sleep
notreal.battery	Where the battery went, logged in the background
notreal.system	Health check, battery, sound and Glyph in one app

The shell

The Phosh app grid is replaced by a joystick launcher (closed source, not in this repo): hold it and your most-used apps fan out under your thumb. Above it, a widget shows weather, battery and RAM, the phone's health, what's playing and your agenda. Swipe up from the left edge for search, reminders and notes: reminders wake the phone from sleep and are read aloud. Hold volume up to just say it instead.

Real screenshots from the phone, personal details blacked out. More in shell/.

Themes

One switch restyles the whole phone: every app, the wallpaper, the widget, the joystick, the keyboard, the Phosh top bar and lock screen, and the icons. Pick one from the ◐ button on the overview widget, or run nrtheme <name>.

vapor · vaporlight · micro · microdark · alien · nasa. Details: shell/theme.

Layout

apps/            the apps above
shell/           hub picker, swipe keyboard, gestures, CRT screen animation, themes
system/          voice assistant, alarms, sleep, health check, backup, haptics, Glyph,
                 DAP mode, battery saver, safe upgrades
spacewar-fixes/  Nothing Phone (1) device tree, drivers, libcamera, audio, calls, sleep
pc/              the home PC side: AI gateway, voices, Matrix bridges, music, video hub
docs/            how it all fits together
tools/           stage.py (copy sources in), scan.py (privacy check, also a pre-commit hook)

The PC behind the phone

Some features run on a home PC that the phone reaches over Tailscale: the Matrix server and bridges for chat, the Navidrome music server, the local LLM and speech voices for the voice assistant and nightly backups. Set your PC's address in ~/.config/notreal/pc.json:

{ "host": "100.x.y.z", "matrix": "https://your-pc.your-tailnet.ts.net" }

How it all connects: docs/pc-link.md. PC setup: pc/README.md.

Contributing

Before every commit, tools/scan.py checks for IP addresses, hostnames, phone numbers, email addresses and API keys. Enable the hook with:

git config core.hooksPath .githooks

Licence

GPL-3.0-or-later.