Full‑bleed artwork, liquid‑glass chrome, and a dock that gets out of your way — built D‑pad‑first for the living room.
- A home that disappears. At rest you see only the wallpaper and a frosted dock pinned to the bottom. Press down and your full app grid slides up — Apple‑TV style.
- Frame Art. Turn the TV into a framed painting — a folder slideshow or a single photo, full‑bleed with an elegant floating clock. Press ←/→ to flip through pictures; it can start itself after an idle timeout.
- Living wallpapers. Hover a favorite and its show/movie poster plays full‑screen as the background.
- Choose your motion. Pick how transitions feel — a calm Default, fluid Glide springs, or Depth, where the home recedes into a painting and dives into an app.
- Real Liquid Glass. The clock, status pills, and dock can refract the wallpaper through their edges via an AGSL shader (Android 13+) over a frosted blur — an optional toggle, off by default to stay light on weak TV GPUs.
- Made for the remote. Every interaction is D‑pad‑first — snappy focus, long‑press menus, no touch required.
- Actually replaceable. A guided Home setup flow gets Tarang running as your TV's home screen, even on Google TV where the system blocks setting a third‑party launcher.
 Frame Art — the TV as a framed painting, with a floating clock. Press ←/→ to flip photos. |
 App grid — press down to reveal every installed app. |
 Settings — animation style, theme, wallpapers, grid density. |
 App artwork — the focused favorite's poster becomes the wallpaper. |
 Long‑press menu — favorite, hide, app info, uninstall. |
 Home setup — live checks + deep‑links to become the default Home. |
Home & navigation
- Frosted dock of favorites — pin, reorder (move mode), and remove your most‑used apps.
- App grid of every launchable app (TV apps and sideloaded phone apps), sorted alphabetically and refreshed live as you install/uninstall.
- Dock anchored to the bottom with the grid tucked below the fold, so the home screen stays calm.
Look & feel
- Wallpapers — gradient presets, your own photo, app artwork, or your Frame Art; rendered sharp and static to stay easy on weak TV GPUs.
- App‑artwork wallpaper — plays a favorite's TV poster art full‑screen while it's focused (reads the system TV artwork).
- Animation styles — pick how the big transitions feel: Default (chrome scales up and flies apart), Glide (fluid springs, no blur), or Depth (the home recedes into a painting and dives into an app).
- Liquid Glass — optional AGSL refraction + frosted blur on the chrome (Android 13+, off by default to save GPU on slower TVs), with a flat‑tint fallback everywhere else.
- Theme — Light, Dark, or Automatic (follows time of day).
- Adjustable density — 3 to 7 columns.
Frame Art
- Turn the TV into a framed picture — a folder slideshow, a single photo, or your current wallpaper, shown full‑bleed with no chrome.
- ←/→ to page through a folder's photos, with slow cross‑fades and an optional "living‑painting" drift.
- An elegant floating clock (optional) with configurable position, size, and date.
- Auto‑start after a configurable idle time, so it doubles as a screensaver; press any key to come back.
Daily driver
- App management from a long‑press: add/remove favorite, Hide app, App info, Uninstall.
- Hidden apps — tuck apps out of the grid and bring them back from Settings.
- Reduce motion — calms Frame Art drift and slideshow, tile‑focus springs, and the app‑launch animation.
- Home setup — detects whether Tarang is your default Home and whether the redirect service is on, and deep‑links you to fix each. On Google TV (which won't let an app set itself as Home) an accessibility service quietly returns you to Tarang whenever the stock launcher surfaces.
- Status bar — clock & date, Wi‑Fi indicator, and quick shortcuts into Wi‑Fi / Android settings.
- Kotlin + Jetpack Compose for TV (
androidx.tv:tv-material3) - MVVM with
StateFlowand manual DI - DataStore (Preferences) for settings
- AGSL
RuntimeShaderfor the glass refraction - Min SDK 28 (Android 9) · Target/Compile SDK 35 · built from the Gradle CLI (no Android Studio required)
# Build a release APK
./gradlew :app:assembleRelease
# Install to a connected device (or wireless ADB target)
adb install -r app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apkTip: debug builds run fine on an emulator but are noticeably slow on real TV hardware — use the release build on a device.
Then, on the device, open Settings → Home setup and follow the steps to make Tarang your home screen.
Tarang (तरंग) — "wave." Built for the couch. 🛋️