Make Toolrack your home screen
Installing Toolrack does not take over your home screen on its own — Android asks you to choose.
Open Toolrack and use Settings › General › Set as default. That takes you to the system’s own launcher picker, which is the only place the choice can be made. If Toolrack is already your default, the row simply says so.
You can change your mind at any time from the same Android setting; nothing about your Toolrack layout is lost while another launcher is in front.
The first-run tour
On first launch Toolrack runs a short tour of the three surfaces. It spotlights the control involved at each step, and each step completes only when you actually perform the gesture — not when you tap “next”.
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| Open the App Drawer | Swipe up anywhere on the Home screen. The drawer with all your apps slides up over it. |
| Close the drawer | Drag down from the handle up top, or from the top of the list, to return Home. |
| Visit Dash | Swipe right on Home to reveal Dash — a scrolling column of widgets one page to the left. |
| Turn on your bubble | Tap the dimmed bubble on the Bubbles widget to activate it. It becomes a floating bubble you can reach from inside any app. |
You can skip it whenever you like — it asks first, and tells you how to get it back.
:::info Replaying the tour The tour returns when Toolrack is reset to its defaults, under Settings › General › Reset to default. That also restores the starting layout, so it is a fresh start rather than just a replay. :::
What you start with
Toolrack seeds a deliberately small starting layout rather than trying to fill the grid: a clock widget in the top-left corner, and a Tools widget on the row below it holding whichever of Files, Drive, Maps, Calendar and the rest this device actually has. The rest of the grid is yours to arrange.
Dash starts with the bubble toggles, an analog clock, and a Social Tools widget filled the same way. Both Tools widgets are ordinary widgets — rename them, empty them, or remove them like any other.
The dock is filled by matching against what is actually on your device — Phone, Messages, Chrome and Camera, plus Photos if you have chosen a five-column dock. A role it cannot find leaves its slot empty rather than substituting something unrelated.
Anything you do not want, long-press and remove. Anything missing, drag in from the App Drawer.
Finding settings
Toolrack’s settings live behind its own icon, the same as any other app — open Toolrack from the Home grid or the App Drawer. There is no hidden gesture to learn.
The gear icon on Dash is a shortcut straight to Dash configuration, since that is the screen you are most likely to want while looking at Dash.
Where next
- Arrange things the way you want them: Home screen
- Set up floating app groups: Bubbles
- Make it look like yours: Personalization