Arcadia Get it

Home screen launcher

Hold.Read.Let go.

Notifications, shortcuts and a live widget — without ever opening the app.

Get Arcadia See it work

The gesture

Hold an icon.
Use the app without opening it.

A panel opens over your home screen with that app's notifications, its shortcuts, and one of its widgets running live. Read it, tap what you need, let go. The app never launches.

Get Arcadia See it
An unfolded foldable phone running Arcadia: notifications across the top, then calendar, activity, weather and a full month view, with folders and a dock below
An ordinary phone running Arcadia: notifications across the top, then calendar, activity and weather widgets above two folders and a dock
Hold the Home icon
PanelsSmart-home scenesLive widgets Widget stacksResize and scaleApp Zero Game launcherHide appsBackup & restore PanelsSmart-home scenesLive widgets Widget stacksResize and scaleApp Zero Game launcherHide appsBackup & restore

The panel

Everything the app can tell you, without opening it.

Most launchers answer a long press with a few shortcuts. Arcadia adds the app's notifications and one of its widgets, and keeps the panel open until you lift your finger.

Google Home held on the cover screen, with its live controls and scene shortcuts Google Home held on the open screen, with its live controls and scene shortcuts
Hold Google Home on the cover screen or the open one: the same panel, its controls and its scenes, without the app. Select either image to view it at full size.
  1. 01

    The notifications it sent you

    Live ones and the ones you already swiped away, kept per app and scrollable inside the panel.

  2. 02

    The shortcuts it publishes

    Whatever the app offers: a scene, a chat, a search. No loading screen first.

  3. 03

    One of its widgets, running

    Pick a widget per app and it runs inside the panel, updating as it would on the home screen.

Notifications

What came in, already on the screen.

Recent notifications sit across the top of the home screen, so the thing you reached for your phone to check is readable without pulling anything down. Tap one to open it, swipe it away when you are done.

The top of the home screen: six notification cards side by side, each with the sender's picture, their message and the time it arrived
The top of the home screen. Six across the open screen, fewer on the cover screen, oldest dropping off the end.
The notification strip scrolled to older cards, on the cover screen and on the open screen
Swipe the strip and the older ones come up: three at a time on the cover, six across when open.
  1. 01

    Read without opening

    Sender, message and arrival time on the card. Most of the time that is the whole errand.

  2. 02

    Kept after you clear them

    Swiping the shade does not lose them. Each app keeps its own history, including the images they arrived with.

  3. 03

    Waiting under the icon

    Hold an app and its notifications are in the panel, live ones and cleared ones together, scrollable.

Phones and foldables

One home screen, however the phone is open.

Arcadia keeps a single layout at a single grid. The inner screen is exactly twice the width of the cover screen’s grid, so two cover pages are the two halves of one unfolded page — the same apps, in the same order, in the same places. Unfolding shows you the half you were not looking at. It does not switch layouts, reflow the grid or move anything, and widgets are limited to the width of one half, so nothing is ever split down the fold.

The cover screen showing one half of the home grid: a stacked calendar, activity rings, weather and two folders
Folded — the cover screen shows one half of the grid.
The inner screen showing both halves of the same home grid at once: calendar, activity, device batteries, sleep and energy widgets, a weather panel and a full month calendar
Unfolded — the same grid with both halves on screen. Nothing moved.

App Blocks

Smart-home scenes
under the Home icon.

Name your Google Home routines once and they sit under the Home icon. Turning the lights off on the way out is a press and a tap, instead of opening the app and waiting for it to load.

  • Rename each scene to whatever you call it
  • Reorder them so the one you use most is first
  • Pull any scene out as its own home screen tile
App Blocks settings with the Google Home demonstration, shortcut switch and scene editor
The App Blocks editor: rename each scene, move it up or down, or send it to the home screen as its own tile.

Widgets

Stacked, scaled, or hosted inside an icon.

Arcadia hosts standard Android app widgets and adds three things the platform launcher does not: several widgets sharing a single grid slot, independent resizing and content scaling, and a widget that runs inside an app's panel instead of on the home screen.

Icon widgets settings with its live-overlay demonstration, app search and assigned widgets
Hosted in a panel Assign one widget per app and it renders in that app's panel rather than consuming a home screen slot, in a compact or large size.
Stacks Any number of widgets share one grid slot and are cycled with a swipe. The gesture is scoped to the stack — surrounding icons, folders and widgets are untouched.
A widget's resize controls: its name and grid size, arrows to grow or shrink it, and a zoom slider set to 60 percent
Resize and scale Set the grid footprint, then scale the widget's contents to fit it instead of cropping them.

Under a held icon

Three more things a long press can carry.

The panel is not only notifications, shortcuts and a widget. An icon can carry a stack of other apps, a game launcher can carry its games, and an app that is playing carries its controls.

Icon stacks

Any home icon can carry a list of apps you choose. Hold it and they appear underneath it as a stack of small icons, in your order, each one a tap away. Let go and the home screen is exactly as it was.

Long press on any icon

Game launcher

Pick a launcher app and choose up to six games for it. Hold its icon and they appear as a list, one under the other, each one straight into the game. Your most played games, a long press away.

Long press on the game launcher icon

Media controls

Hold the icon of an app that is playing and its panel shows what is on: the artwork, and play, pause and next. Two things and nothing else, with no use counts beside them. Skip the track or pause it, then let go.

Long press on an app that is playing

Control

Set up once, then left alone.

Three phones: the pages overview with two page cards and Widgets, Settings and Lock tiles; the page editor listing a page's apps with Move buttons and ticks; the widget picker with its search box and app filters
Long-press empty space for the pages overview; a pencil on each page lists its apps; the widget picker searches everything your apps offer.

App Zero

One app owns the page left of home. Swipe right from page zero and you are in it.

Game launcher

Pick a launcher app, then choose up to six of your most played games for its panel.

Hide what you never open

Hidden apps leave home, the dock and search. They stay installed and still work.

Notification history

Kept per app, with the images they arrived with, after the shade has been cleared. Clear one app or all of them.

Backup and restore

Pages, folders, widgets and settings saved to a file you keep. New phone, same home screen.

Phones and foldables

One layout at one grid. The cover screen shows half of it, the inner screen shows all of it, and opening the phone rearranges nothing.

Lock the home screen

Freeze the layout so a stray press cannot drag an icon out of place. Press and hold still opens the app’s block — the lock stops things moving, not the controls you use.

Gestures

Double tap to search or lock the phone. Swipe up for search, swipe up on the dock for the task switcher.

Large folders

Switch it on, or resize a folder past one slot, and the folder becomes a large tile: its apps in a grid, each one tap away.

Four settings pages side by side: the settings list, Gestures, Hidden apps and Backup and restore
The settings pages: the main list, Gestures, Hidden apps, and Backup and restore.

Privacy

Your phone. Your rules.
Zero ads. No data sold.

Built to respect your privacy.

Your privacy is a top priority. Your home-screen layout and notification history stay in Android’s private app storage. No account needed. You choose which permissions to allow.

Zero ads No data sold Privacy first No account

Clear, simple information about your data. Read the policy.

Get Arcadia

Productivity. No account.

Google Play