{"slug": "an-android-launcher-with-no-icons-and-an-ebook-above-the-clock", "title": "An Android launcher with no icons, and an eBook above the clock", "summary": "Paper, an Android launcher that replaces icons and widgets with a text-only, e-paper-style home screen, is in closed testing and needs 12 testers for two weeks before it can be sold on Google Play. The app, which supports reading EPUB books and includes no analytics, accounts, or advertising, is free for testers and will be a one-time purchase with no subscription.", "body_md": "Paper is an Android home screen: grey text on a paper surface, with no icons, no badges and nothing that moves, so nothing on the screen is bidding for you. What is left is the thing you picked the phone up to do, and a book to read when it turns out you didn’t.\n\nTry it here The launcher itself, running in this page. Swipe it, or tap a name below to turn to another of its pages.\n\nThe Embedded AI Engineer · 7%\n\ntap the right of the book to turn a page · write on the notes\nsheet.\n\nthree of Paper's pages, with scripted answers. The app also has the\nindex, the shelf, the settings and a dozen optional lines.\n\nthe whole app, in the order you meet it\n\nPoint Paper at an *.epub* and it joins the shelf. Pick\nanother and the first one waits exactly where you left it:\nmid-sentence, mid-page, months later.\n\n**Covers come out of the book itself**, dithered to\neight greys the way an e-reader prints a picture. A book without\none gets its title set on a blank board, which is what a plain\nbinding looks like anyway.\n\nReach it by long-pressing the page you are reading, or from the reader’s own footer. Everything here is text and paper: no store, no account, no library that lives on someone else’s server.\n\nColour is how a screen shouts.\n\nA red dot on a green icon is not decoration; it is a claim on your attention, made by someone who is paid when it works. Paper takes the colour away, the whole phone and the lock screen with it, and most of the pull goes too. What is left is words, and words wait their turn.\n\nEvery one of them ships turned off. Paper does nothing until you ask.\n\nNo icons. No widgets. No animations. No analytics.\n\nNothing is collected about you, there is no account, and the app cannot show you an advertisement because there is nowhere to put one. E-paper does not shimmer, which is why nothing on this page moves, either.\n\nPaper is finished and in testing. Before it can go on sale, Google wants twelve people to have used it for a fortnight — so twelve people get it before anyone can buy it.\n\nYou need an Android 13 phone you are willing to make boring, and the Google account email you use on it, because that is how Play lets a tester in. You get the paid app for nothing, and you keep it.\n\nWhat is actually useful back: which gesture you reached for that was not there, and what made you put the phone down and pick your old launcher back up. Bug reports are welcome. Silence is fine too, and still counts.\n\nThe form writes an email in your own mail app and sends nothing on its own. This site has no server to send it to, which is also why there is no list you have to be removed from later.\n\nBought once, like a book. No subscription, no trial that expires, no second tier to unlock. Every feature on this page is in the app you buy.\n\nIn closed testing now, and short of testers: Google wants twelve people to have run it for a fortnight before it can be sold. [Ask for a copy](#testers) and you get it free.\n\nAndroid 13 or newer, any make; the grain shader needs API 33.\n\n**What you buy is the launcher.** The pages, the\nbook, the index, the paper: all of it works the moment you\ninstall it, with nothing to configure and no account to make.\n\n**Nothing is collected.** No analytics, no accounts,\nno advertising, no crash reports. The app has nowhere to\nsend anything.\n[The privacy policy](privacy.html) is one short page,\nand it is the whole story.\n\nSet in Literata (SIL OFL). No cookies, no trackers, nobody watching.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/an-android-launcher-with-no-icons-and-an-ebook-above-the-clock", "canonical_source": "https://paperlauncher.app/", "published_at": "2026-08-13 11:49:41+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-13 12:11:48.848294+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-products"], "entities": ["Paper", "Google Play", "Android"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/an-android-launcher-with-no-icons-and-an-ebook-above-the-clock", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/an-android-launcher-with-no-icons-and-an-ebook-above-the-clock.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/an-android-launcher-with-no-icons-and-an-ebook-above-the-clock.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/an-android-launcher-with-no-icons-and-an-ebook-above-the-clock.jsonld"}}