Before Launcher | Go Minimal

⎋ Before Labs

In-app purchases

About this app

⚡️Stay focused using the minimal launcher with style and functionality.
✶Open your phone 40% less.✶
✶Reduce distractions with our notification filter. 80% of all notifications don’t warrant interruption.✶
✶Focus on what matters.✶

❌ Zero ads, never a subscription
✶No ads, EVER✶
✶No subscriptions, EVER✶
✶Lifetime purchase for ALL of your devices✶

Before Launcher gets your time back, by giving your phone a minimal look. This minimalist launcher provides many useful features including:

Minimal homescreen
Quick launch of your most important apps. It’s configurable, too!

Customize the look, make your own clean style
Choose from our large list of photo, gradient and solid themes or create your own.

Fast access to your favorites and everything else
Fast access to all your apps in a scrollable, sortable & searchable list.

Favorite, folder and hide your apps
Group apps into folders. Pin apps to the top of your apps list. Hide unwanted and distracting bloatware (available in pro version)

Hide less important notifications
Our filtered notification drawer is unique. Less important notifications don't interrupt you with vibrations or noise. They won't clutter up your notification bar. But you still receive them and they are accessible with a quick swipe.

Notified but not distracted
Focus on what is essential. Important notifications still notify you, so you don’t miss anything.

Built to be private
We are not in the business of capturing or selling your data. We don't track any data that identifies you. We even allow you to turn off our anonymous analytics.

No required permissions = more privacy/security
Many other launchers want 10 or more device permissions. (the notification filter asks for one access but you can turn it off that feature).

Take control of your phone
Before Launcher sorts apps by their size, their installed date and the last time you used them. Uninstall the ones that take up too much space, or you never use.

Style your app icons
Add our own styles and also add 3rd party icon packs

Easy set up
Our guided process helps you get Before Launcher set up in no time.

Selected as one of Fast Company's best new apps of the year in 2019.

The minimalism movement inspired our work! This includes books like Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price and Indistractable by Nir Ayal. (2) Products like the Lightphone.

The Before Launcher app, with your consent, uses Android's Accessibility Service API to enable the double-tap gesture to quickly turn off your device’s screen. Your use of this feature is optional. The accessibility service in Before Launcher is disabled by default. Your consent is required to allow the accessibility service to be used by the Before Launcher and when consent is granted it is only used for the double-tap feature. You can revoke your consent at any time. The feature and the service do not collect or share any data.

NOTE: We would love to hear from you. Our roadmap includes future support for gestures, custom fonts, and more.

Ratings and reviews

Only downloaded it recently and got the pro version, it feels so close to perfection in how I like to navigate my devices! I would love as a feature for the apps screen to be able to only show folders personally, that way I don't have a long list of apps that I wont scroll through taking up space, as usually I remember the names of infrequent apps I want to use so I search them anyways. Also, separating hiding apps from affecting the homescreen apps would be a convenient feature as well.

Absolutely loved this app and paid for premium. I have a recent problem with Instagram where when I click "more" on a longer caption, the caption disappeared. Uninstalled insta, cleared cache, everything. No change. And couldn't find anything about this problem anywhere online. Which seemed very weird!! Tonight I realised that the problem started when I installed Before Launcher. Just uninstalled it and my Instagram is fixed!!! SO WEIRD!! Its such a shame tho because otherwise great app!

I'm liking this app so far! Very clean interface and quite helpful so far for reducing screentime and avoiding the unnecessary distractions that come with a smart phone. The notification filter is a nice tool too! The animations with guesture navigation could be smoother (going into the recent apps menu takes a very long swipe and hold and going to the home screen is a little jumpy) Update: every few days it randomly crashes and either the background I set goes away or the launcher closes

What's new

🚀 7.0.3
🐞 Resolves background and theme selection issues for Android 13+