Toolrack replaces your home screen. It is built with Jetpack Compose and runs over your real wallpaper rather than a picture of one.
Requires Android 8.0 (Oreo) or later.
The three surfaces
Everything in Toolrack lives on one of three surfaces, and every one of them shares the same dimmed view of your wallpaper.
| Surface | How you reach it | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Dash | Swipe right from Home | A scrolling column of widgets |
| Home | Where the Home button lands | Your grid, folders and a persistent dock |
| App Drawer | Swipe up from Home | Every app, with search |
Swipe back down from the drawer to return Home. The dock stays put across every Home page, and can optionally show on Dash too.
What you can do
- Getting started — install it, make it your home screen, and take the first-run tour.
- Home screen — arrange the grid, make folders, add pages, resize widgets, and lock the whole layout once you like it.
- App drawer and search — grid or alphabetical, four densities, an A–Z rail on whichever edge suits your hand, and search across apps, shortcuts and settings.
- Dash and widgets — any Android widget on Home or Dash, plus Toolrack’s own built-ins.
- Bubbles — floating widgets that ride on top of other apps.
- Hidden apps — remove apps from the drawer and search, behind your device lock.
- Personalization — icon packs, icon shapes, wallpaper dim and drawer density.
Backup and restore
Your whole setup — layout, folders, bubbles, widget list, every setting — exports to a single JSON file you can save or send anywhere, and restore on another device or after a reinstall. It is under Settings › General.
Premium status is deliberately not included in that file: it is tied to your Google Play purchase rather than to the backup, so it follows your account on its own.
Permissions
Toolrack asks for very little, and nothing silently.
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Display over other apps | Floating bubbles. Requested only when you enable them, and only through the system’s own grant screen. |
| Biometric | Optional stronger lock on hidden apps. |
| Run at startup | Restores your bubbles after a reboot. |
| Internet | Sending a bug report, and nothing else. |
Toolrack reads your installed app list through a scoped query rather than the
QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission that most launchers request.
In this section
- Getting started — Install Toolrack, make it the launcher your Home button opens, and take the short first-run tour that teaches the three surfaces one…
- Home screen — Arrange the Home grid: drag apps into place, make folders, add pages, resize widgets, size the grid and dock to taste, and lock the whole…
- App drawer and search — The full app list: grid or alphabetical with an A-Z rail on whichever edge suits your hand, four display densities, and one search field…
- Dash and widgets — Dash is a scrolling column of widgets one swipe left of Home. Any Android widget works on either surface, alongside Toolrack’s own clocks…
- Bubbles — A bubble is a widget that floats on top of whatever you are doing. It snaps to the screen edge, opens on a tap, and can hold a rack of…
- Hidden apps — Remove apps from the drawer and from search entirely, and get them back with a deliberate two-finger gesture gated behind your device PIN…
- Personalization — Use the icon packs you already own, mask every icon to one of four shapes, tune how far Toolrack dims your wallpaper, and set the wallpaper…
- Privacy policy — Toolrack Launcher collects nothing during normal use. The only feature that sends anything off your device is the bug reporter, and it…