Android app · Live on Google Play
NextUp Launcher
A custom Android home screen that restyles every app icon into a single look: molten lava, neon city, watercolor, carved gold. I designed, built, and shipped it end to end, including the cloud backend that renders the themes.
- Role
- Solo: design, app, backend
- Platform
- Android
- Status
- Live on Google Play
- Stack
- Kotlin · Compose · Firebase
What it is
Android lets you replace the home screen, but most launchers give you a grid and an icon pack that only covers popular apps. NextUp themes everything. You pick a look, and every icon on the phone is re-rendered to match, along with the wallpaper, colors, and fonts.
The app
- Home screen with dynamic paging, drag-and-drop, folders, and a multi-cell spanning grid.
- Animated app drawer, search, profile switching, and notification management.
- A customization hub for themes, color, fonts, icon shape, and wallpaper.
- A built-in video feed ("Discover videos") on the home screen.
The backend
- Themes are rendered server-side on Firebase Cloud Functions by the icon-theming engine, then cached on the device.
- Firestore sync for user setups and a Cloud Run ffmpeg service for video thumbnails.
- Google Play Billing for premium themes.
How I built it
Kotlin and Jetpack Compose with Hilt and an MVVM architecture, plus unit tests. The launcher came out of four years building launchers professionally at ReachMobi, where cold-start performance decided whether users kept the app as their default.
Screens
Themes and features
Let's build something.
I'm open to full-time and contract roles in AI/agent engineering, mobile, and full-stack TypeScript, remote or hybrid around NYC and Philadelphia.