Problem
Phones keep getting bigger and foldable, yet the home screen is still a grid of icons up to the top edge. One-handed, half of it is out of reach, and every app asks for attention.
Solution
Palma Launcher, a native Android launcher in Kotlin and Jetpack Compose. Everything you tap sits in the lower half of the screen, and every screen mirrors for left- and right-handed use. The home screen holds at most seven favourites; the rest is one alphabet swipe or search away, with sums, notes and a command palette in the same bar. On foldables the layout follows the fold state, with a separate view when the phone stands half open. Workspaces, a guest mode and three modes (Calm, Nerd and a stripped-down Zero) sit on top. Two apps share the same style: Palma Cam, a camera with film looks and old-camera presets, and Palma Arcade, fourteen original games in three styles (House, Palm and Retro).
Outcome
Palma is live on palmalauncher.com in seven languages and runs on any phone from Android 10. I chose not to use the Play Store: the site is the shop and the app updates itself. Because Android skips precompiling apps installed outside Play, each update ships with its own baseline profile, so the app is fast right after updating. The test device is a Galaxy Z Fold.
