Orb Launcher (Experimental)

Flocs {dev}

About this app

Your home screen, alive.

Orb is an Android launcher built around one breathing orb. It reacts to what your phone is doing in real time, and when you tap it, the apps you're about to need float up around it. Everything it learns stays on your phone.

An orb that reads the moment
• Battery low, it looks drained. Notifications piling up, it gets a heartbeat.
• Charging, a thread of light rises from the bottom of the screen.
• Music playing, a waveform wraps around it and it breathes with the tempo.
• Driving, stars stream out from behind it. Walking, it moves with your steps.
• Colours drift with the light in the room, the time of day and the weather. There's no dark mode switch to remember, and fixed themes are there if you prefer them.

The right apps, right now
Tap the orb and seven apps appear: the ones you're most likely to open next, based on the time, where you are, what's connected and your habits. It learns from every launch, so it gets sharper over the first week. Pin your favourites to keep them there.

Visions (beta)
Put up to nine of your photos inside the orb, veiled in liquid ink. Wake your phone and one rises to the surface. Shake it for the next one. Your photos never leave your phone.

A complete launcher
• App drawer with fast search, folders and recent apps
• Scribble search: draw a letter anywhere on the home screen to find an app
• Widget Cosmos: place widgets freely, anywhere on the screen
• Dock, icon packs and your own icon for any app
• Notification previews and media controls on the home screen
• Clock, date and weather at a glance
• Hidden apps, locked behind your fingerprint, face or PIN
• Work profile support
• App pairs for split screen, and shortcuts from other apps
• Your own photo or your wallpaper as the background, with a frosted app drawer
• Halo mode: a see-through orb that shows your wallpaper

Private by design
No ads. No account. No analytics, trackers or third-party SDKs. Predictions, places and usage history live in a local database on your phone, and uninstalling removes them. The only thing Orb sends anywhere is your location, to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute's free weather service (yr.no), for your forecast.

Good to know
• Needs Android 15 or newer.
• Every permission is optional and unlocks one feature. Skip location and you lose weather. The launcher works either way.
• The orb is animated, so it may use a little more battery than a static launcher. It quiets down in battery saver.
• Made by one developer in Denmark and updated often. Ideas and bugs go straight to me: [e-mail]

Ratings and reviews

I like the app but I have problems with the the music controls. It automatically goes to Spotify and I don't use it. There's no settings to change the default music source, so I had to remove the app. I need full control of my music. Also it would be nice if the apps can be categorized. I like my launcher to look neat. a long list of apps is tiring. Please update

i love it! however, photo widget doesn't work (it doesn't let me to choose a picture to display) plus i wonder if we could have more customization of orb? e.g add a slightly transparent picture? it looks good in my mind, i wish i could attach a pic of the idea. but basically imagine having a soft picture that is barely visible inside the orb but honestly? huge potential. (edit: thank you for response, i will wait for the updates!)

Phenomenal!!! For a product that is "being developed" you would never know it. This is a polished product that is smooth and fast. It definitely uses more battery than other launchers I've used, but, other launchers are not aware of things and responding in real time. I can't wait to see where the developer takes this. I personally hope to see a toggle in the future to hide the notification/status bar. To me, that would be the last piece to completely clean the home screen.

What’s new

🔮 The orb has visions now (beta).

• Give the orb up to nine of your photos. They rest inside it, veiled in liquid. Wake your phone and one rises to the surface. Shake it, then hold still, for the next.
• Make it yours: Ink or Mica, how deep the photos sit, and how much they take on the orb's colour.
• Needs a one-time download of about 19 MB. Your photos never leave your phone.

🏞️ Drawer background
• The app drawer can now use your home photo or wallpaper, frosted so names stay readable.