Boring Launcher — Terms & Conditions

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Boring Launcher is an Android home-screen replacement (a "launcher") built around one idea: make your phone boring on purpose, so it stops competing for your attention. These terms cover what the app does, what it doesn't do, and what happens to your data. It is developed and maintained by an individual developer, not a company.

1. What this app is

Boring Launcher replaces your phone's default home screen and app drawer. It intentionally adds small amounts of friction — delays, confirmation prompts, hidden search results, and optionally suppressed notifications — before opening apps you've flagged as distracting ("Timesink" apps). It also offers a plain home screen (clock, date, calendar, next alarm, and a small battery / Wi-Fi / mobile-signal indicator), app grouping, and basic customization. By using this app, you agree to these terms.

2. Permissions this app uses, and why

Calendar (READ_CALENDAR) — optional. Reads your upcoming events so they can be shown on the home screen. Never modified, never sent anywhere.
Usage access (PACKAGE_USAGE_STATS) — optional. Used for one thing, entirely on-device: reading today's number of unlocks and screen-on time to show in the home screen's quick panel, each time you open it. This data is not logged, stored by the app, or transmitted. The app runs no background service and does not watch which apps you open.
Network state and Wi-Fi state (ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE, ACCESS_WIFI_STATE) — used only to draw the small battery / Wi-Fi / mobile-signal indicator on the home screen. They let the app see whether you're connected to Wi-Fi and how strong the Wi-Fi and mobile signals are; they do not let it send or receive anything, and this app has no internet permission. Battery level and charging state need no permission at all. Nothing is stored or transmitted, and the indicator can be turned off in Settings.
Request to delete packages (REQUEST_DELETE_PACKAGES) — lets the Drawer's "Uninstall" action ask Android to remove an app. Android always shows its own confirmation and you must approve it; the app cannot uninstall anything by itself.
Notification access — optional, and OFF unless you separately grant it from its own dedicated Settings screen. Android's own permission model for this is broad — it technically allows an app to read the full content of every notification on your device — but Boring Launcher only ever looks at ONE thing: which app posted a given notification (its package name), never its title, message text, or any other content. That's enough to answer one question — "is this notification from an app I flagged as Timesink?" — and when you also turn on "Suppress notifications" on the Timesink Apps screen, the answer being yes is all it takes to remove that notification on-device, so it can't be tapped to open the app directly and skip the friction above. Notification content is never read, never logged, and never transmitted anywhere — only the source app's identity is ever inspected, and only to decide whether to suppress. You can revoke this permission at any time from Android's own Settings.

3. Third-party services

Boring Launcher does not make any network requests of its own, and does not send your data anywhere. (The network-state permission above only reads whether you're connected; it gives the app no way to use the connection.) There is no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising SDKs, no account or sign-in, and nothing is ever sold. An earlier version showed a weather reading fetched from a third-party weather provider; that feature has been removed entirely, along with the INTERNET and location permissions it needed, so no third party is involved in this app in any way.

Tapping a calendar event opens your device's own calendar app. The "About us" page in Settings has two links, to the developer's YouTube channel and Google Play developer page; they open in your browser and the Play Store app, not in Boring Launcher. Searching the Drawer for an app that isn't installed may offer to open the Play Store — this opens the Play Store app (or its website) directly, using its own network access, not this app's.

Tapping the unlocks / screen-time figures in the quick panel opens your phone's own usage dashboard (Digital Wellbeing), and the quick panel's Assistant button opens your phone's own default assistant app. Both are separate apps with their own privacy terms; Boring Launcher passes them nothing.

4. Data storage

Everything else — your app list, groups, renamed apps, hidden apps, Timesink flags, and settings — is stored locally on your device only. Uninstalling the app removes this data. There is no cloud backup or sync.

5. No warranty

This app is provided "as is," without warranty of any kind. It is a personal project, not a commercial product with a support team. While care has been taken to make the friction features (delays, confirmation prompts) reliable, you should not depend on this app as your sole safeguard for anything safety-critical.

6. Your responsibility

You're responsible for the permissions you grant. If you set Boring Launcher as your default launcher and later want to switch back, you can do so at any time from your device's default apps settings.

7. Changes to these terms

These terms may be updated as the app changes. Continued use of the app after an update means you accept the revised terms. The "last updated" date at the top of this page will reflect the latest revision.

8. Contact

Questions about these terms or the app can be sent to editor.techreels@gmail.com.