Kvaesitso

Kvaesitso is a free, open-source replacement for the default home screen launcher on Android phones. A launcher is the app that controls your home screen: the grid of icons you see when you unlock your phone, the swipe-to-search gesture, and the app drawer where all your installed apps live. Kvaesitso redesigns this experience around search rather than static icon grids.

Instead of arranging apps into pages or folders, the core idea is that you type what you want and the launcher surfaces it. The README points to a documentation website for full details on what can be searched and how the launcher is configured, but the emphasis throughout is on search as the primary way to interact with your device.

Kvaesitso is available through F-Droid, an open-source Android app store. The official F-Droid version has some features removed because those features depend on external services that do not meet F-Droid's fully-open-source requirement. A separate repository maintained by the developer includes the full-featured version. Manual installation by downloading an APK from the releases page is also an option.

The project is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3, which means anyone can use, modify, and share the code freely as long as they keep the same license on any changes. The plugin development components use the Apache 2.0 license instead, which is more permissive for developers building on top of them. Translations are managed through a separate localization platform, and the README links to a guide for anyone who wants to help translate the app into another language.