Before Niagara Launcher, my Galaxy S10+ still had a fairly typical One UI home screen with rows of app icons, a dock, a couple of folders, and so many shortcuts competing for space that the wallpaper mostly filled the gaps. One of many reasons I liked Niagara was that it replaces the usual rows of icons and folders with a much simpler home screen. Its scrolling app list cleaned up most of that, but after using it for a while, I started wondering how far I could push the same idea. After all, the best minimalist Android launchers can strip the home screen back much further than simply rearranging the usual grid.

That search led me to Discreet Launcher, a tiny 1.4 MiB app on F-Droid whose screenshots revealed very little about what it was actually like to use. At that size, installing it felt like a pretty low-risk experiment, so I gave it a shot. Within a few minutes, I had a home screen that made even Niagara look busy.

Discreet Launcher opened to a whole lot of wallpaper

Swiping down brought up the missing instructions

Discreet Launcher opened on my wallpaper and left me there. I waited for a setup card or app icon to appear, but the screen stayed as it was. Swiping down brought up the pieces I was missing. A Set as default launcher button appeared across the top, followed by instructions to add favorite apps and the small wrench button that opens the menu.

I tapped the button and chose Discreet Launcher from Android’s default home app picker. After that, swiping down brought back the favorites panel and its wrench button, while swiping up opened the full app drawer. Returning home cleared both panels and put the wallpaper back in charge.

There’s almost no onboarding beyond that, which made the first minute slightly confusing. Once the gestures clicked, though, the layout became easy to understand because there isn’t much competing for your attention. If the swipe directions feel backward, the Operation settings can reverse them.

I added back only the parts I wanted

Five favorites and a clock were enough

The Favorites page lists every installed app with a checkbox and arrow controls for changing the order. I picked Asana, Collabora Office, Files, Camera, and Docs. After refreshing the list, those five icons appeared in a row across the top, with the wrench underneath. It works like a speed dial for the apps I reach for most often.

Discreet Launcher can keep that row visible at all times or make it available via an optional notification. I kept it behind the swipe because leaving it permanently on-screen started creeping back toward the dock-and-shortcuts setup I was trying to get away from.

The app drawer is a compact alphabetical grid with a dedicated Search shortcut in the first position. App names can be hidden to fit more icons on the screen, though I left them visible because my collection has enough vaguely similar logos to make it a memory test. Long-pressing an app gives you shortcuts to open it, jump to its Android settings or store page, rename it, add it to favorites, or place it in a folder. Discreet also lets you hide apps from Android without uninstalling them, while folders gave me enough control to tidy the drawer without removing anything.

The settings menu looks old-school, but I only needed a small slice of what it offers. I resized the icons, left the labels alone, and added the built-in digital clock with the date underneath. Centering it gave the home screen one useful piece of information without covering much of the wallpaper.

There are deeper controls if you want them, including immersive mode, different icon layouts, gesture shortcuts, and options to hide parts of the interface. Discreet isn’t unusual in making gestures part of the launcher itself, since custom launcher gestures can turn swipes and double taps into shortcuts. Here, double-tapping or swiping left and right can open Search, bring up the menu, or launch an app. I left those gestures unassigned because the basic up-and-down setup already did what I wanted. Export and Import options can also save the configuration if you plan to recreate it later.

The launcher stays out of my business

Its privacy policy is short for a good reason

Discreet Launcher is open-source, ad-free, and works offline. That combination fits naturally with its distribution through F-Droid, which specializes in free and open-source Android apps. Its privacy policy says the app reads the list of installed packages to display them, stores its settings locally, and doesn’t share that information. I never had to create an account, sign into anything, or connect to an online service before using it.

Open-source launchers aren’t especially unusual on Android either. You can even replace Samsung’s launcher with an open-source alternative, such as Lawnchair, if you want something much closer to a conventional home screen layout. Discreet takes the idea in a considerably more stripped-back direction.

F-Droid lists QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES and notification access among the permissions worth knowing about. The first gives the launcher the installed-app list it needs for the drawer, while POST_NOTIFICATIONS supports the optional favorites notification. The app’s own manifest confirms those are the two Android permissions it requests. The notification feature is easy to ignore if, like me, you’d rather keep favorites behind a swipe. Exported backups are plain-text files, so I wouldn’t casually share one if it contains renamed or hidden apps.

I’m keeping the emptiness

Discreet Launcher’s first-run experience could explain itself better, and its settings pages look dated next to Niagara Launcher. There’s also a bigger caveat now. The developer archived the project on July 31, 2026, and says it is no longer maintained, so I wouldn’t count on future Android compatibility fixes if something eventually breaks.

For now, though, it works well on my Galaxy S10+. My shortcuts appear when I ask for them, the center of the screen stays clear, and every other app is still easy to reach. After years of filling home screens and then cleaning them up again, I like having one that finally feels finished precisely because there’s so little on it.