I love the notifications, especially how flexible they are! I’m using the home app ones for messenger and the notification window for calendar alerts.
Thank you for your work - it’s truly amazing! I wish there was a way to give your launcher access to the e-ink modes (looking at you Mudita devs) - that’s the only thing missing. Other than that, though: It’s perfect, even on v.0.1!
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I thought it worked, but that was premature excitement. I’ll keep testing, but so far haven’t stumbled upon the proper item to disable. i.e. Conversations doesn’t show anything specifically called “background connection” - nonetheless, this gives me something to work with in troubleshooting.
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It looks great 
I noticed you’re using both Threema and Signal. I’m on team Signal myself, but I’m curious—how do you find Threema? Do you use it for everyday communication?
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Glad you’re finding it useful
I had spent hours before I made this launcher trying to figure out a workaround to access the E-ink modes. I managed to find which driver controls and found the correct values. I did write an SDK using AI to try and access it but it’s locked to Mudita Service app which is a sys app and I can’t access it without root permissions.
I have found a way how to activate text mode temporarily using ADB but the moment you exit the app it turns off 
The only thing I managed to do is the “fake” e-ink refresh which clears the ghosting (especially if you’re using dark mode).
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Yes, I have been using it regularly for years. It’s a reliable messenger - I’ve never had any issues with it. I mostly use it for family comms and a few groups. This is Threema Libre, which is the version without Google services from F-Droid. It’s actively maintained and recently they started supporting multi-device. And it runs great on the Kompakt.
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Thank you for sharing this app with the Mudita community. I did the switch from the Niagara Launcher and I don’t regret this move.
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This is simply amazing! All I wanted from a launcher and a even more.
Since you are asked for setup details, here are mine:
- disabled gestures – phone is on the first page anyway and I do not receive enough notifications to need a notifications window (all apps that may have notifications fit the first page, so asterisk and label is enough),
- enabled volume up/down for next/previous page – this is wonderful feature! scrolling on e-ink feels not responsive enough, so I prefer to minimize it. And I love the mechanical feel of buttons,
- label notifications are great as well – I like to have a hint of the message received at glance (playing media label might not be something I use as I do not listen to anything on Kompakt, but it still looks great and I would love it if I’d listen to something),
- possibility to uninstall sideloaded apps is a nice addition,
- renaming apps is useful as well – I renamed some apps to simple terms, e.g. Lithium → Books,
- clock – on,
- battery – on,
- fonts – default (I’ve got basic with this kind of things over the years )
all in all I’m really happy with it!
@gezimos thank you so much for your work and for sharing it with us. Just out of curiosity, did you have previous experience with Kotlin?
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Not sure if that’s possible, but someone suggested here on the forum that there is an app or adb setting that would allow to bind volume-up double-press to toggle the screen light. I’ll try to find it.
I’m going to rely on the home screen ones.
Overall, I’m impressed. You make me feel tempted to sideload apps (currently I only use weather, keeping maps, notes, camera and calculator as tools). I have some time to think whether I prefer more apps or longer battery life. 
Do you have a buycoffee account or alike? You deserve a cup of coffee at least! Kudos!
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- Gestures came with the original app I just minimised them because they had too many options like short swipes, long swipes but I left only basic ones.
- I feel the same, love the clicky buttons to move up and down. Also helps in settings to move the slider when changing sizes to be more precize.
- media playing label came as an idea when I found that my phone had been playing my music library on the back with volume off and I had no idea
- uninstall/rename these were from the original app, but I find them useful as well, I also like to rename to simple words like Anytime Player → Podcats and Auxio to Music.
And to answer your last question, zero experience with Kotlin before. I first just started editing the xml layout files since those are easy to understand from my experience as a UI designer. Some things looked very similar to Javascript so I was able to edit some more.
Then I got introduced Gemin in Android studio, and that made things even worse, just bugs and broke existing code all the time.
Then I moved to Github copilot, which allowed me to understand things in more detail, and helped me make a lot of the features that I added to the app. Still a long way to go by learning Kotlin, but I find this way better than to make Hello world apps.
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Not sure if that’s possible, but someone suggested here on the forum that there is an app or adb setting that would allow to bind volume-up double-press to toggle the screen light. I’ll try to find it.
Let me know if you find it, but i’ll do some testing once I get the chance directly on the device.
Overall, I’m impressed. You make me feel tempted to sideload apps (currently I only use weather, keeping maps, notes, camera and calculator as tools). I have some time to think whether I prefer more apps or longer battery life.
I try to keep it simple, but I had to get the communication apps. Signal works decently, but Viber and Whatsapp go to sleep a lot so I only get notifications if I wake up the apps by entering on them once per day. I also had to get the Earphone companion app, because they won’t reconnect through bluetooth settings until they update it with a fix. But overall I’m not using the device a lot even with sideloaded apps.
Thanks for your offer, It’s very much appreciated. Currently there’s no way to donate, but in the future I might add them to the github page. I’ll think about it
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Thank you so much. I will give it a try I wonder how many of my friend are using Threema
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Thank you for building this, this is awesome! I haven’t tried it yet, but here are two feature requests already:
- From what I understand, (most?) Android notifications carry extra information / link to a specific action/activity inside the app that should open when the notification is clicked. Would be awesome to support this, instead of a button that opens the app. Notifications can also carry quick actions buttons and other stuff, maybe some day these could be supported as well.
- I think this was already mentioned before, but app shortcuts! Various apps can create shortcuts, and I’m not sure what’s the modern standard for these, but for testing I know that the Activity Manager / Activity Launcher apps can create shortcuts to specific activities within apps
And I don’t know much about Kotlin or Android development yet but I’ll try to learn and maybe I’ll be able to contribute on GitHub
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Yes that’s is correct, in android notifications do carry extra features and information. However it’s too hard to try and track them because they all act differently. One app the value for name is the app name, for another app it’s the title of the notification or the name of the contact. It requires so much testing and mapping that I don’t have the time to do.
That’s why I opted to something simple, as it was still better than nothing for a device like the Kompakt. -
The shortcuts will come. In fact I think they were already there, but in the Kompakt it was showing literally all the system shortcuts/dialogs that it was difficult to find which are the actual apps. Maybe I’ll add a on optional preference that user can turn on to show the shortcuts/system apps.
I don’t know much about Kotlin tbh, but with Github Copilot I can pretend I know what I’m doing you should do the same, fork the launcher and give it a go to edit it for the features you want. That’s what I did
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@john765 Have you see the Minimal Phone? It’s basically a full Android with a keyboard & it looks like the BlackBerry Classic with an e ink screen. The reviews are a mixed bag, so I wouldn’t recommend it, but the looks is cool.
Thank you so much for making this! I love it as it looks so clean and I can customise it with fonts. And also: notifications! <3
Here is my setup (I also configured the volume keys for scrolling):
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I’m very happy you’re liking it!
How are the notifications on Beeper? I have stopped using Beeper since I got Mudita and didn’t have the chance to test myself.
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I think they only come through if Beeper has been active or open when the message came in. But that’s not a big deal for me. I am happy if I see them and if I’m waiting for a reply, I check Beeper quite often anyway
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Oh I meant more in the sense do they appear correctly in the launcher.
Because that’s the case for Whatsapp as well, it goes to sleep so unless you open it up once in a while you won’t get notifications. But that’s because of lack of PlayServices
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I don’t have preview on so I don’t know how they display the message content and sender but the asterisk works well and they also get displayed in the ‘Letters’ view.
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Have seen it, don’t like it. It is too big and too wide. Kompakt is way ahead. Kompakt is something else. I was just thinking out loud… But I believe that you guys from Mudita would desing a better and more compact phone than minimal one. Would buy it for sure 
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