typelauncher

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-08-25

Type Launcher is an Android home screen launcher. This policy describes what the app does and does not do with your data.

Summary

• Type Launcher does not collect, store, or transmit personally identifiable information (PII).
• All of your launcher data — your dock, hidden apps, launch counts, recents, widgets, and settings — lives only on your device.
• The app makes no network requests of its own to any backend operated by the developer.
• The app asks before sending anonymous crash reports and performance analytics, and sends nothing until you say yes. These are described below and never include PII, your typed queries, your app list, your notifications, your contacts, or your calendar contents.

Data stored on your device

Type Launcher persists the following entirely on your device, in Android SharedPreferences and the app’s private files directory:

• The list of apps you have docked.
• The list of apps you have hidden.
• Per-app launch counts and the most-recently-launched apps list (used to rank and show recents).
• Dock and UI settings (icon size, sort order, keyboard auto-show, etc.).
• A snapshot of the labels and metadata of installed apps, used to render the app list on the first frame after launch.
• Cached app icon bitmaps, used to render icons on the first frame after launch.
• Selected widgets and their custom heights.
• A short rolling in-memory log buffer (capped at 300 entries) used by the “Report bug” action.

None of this data is uploaded by the app. You can clear it at any time from Android’s Settings → Apps → Type Launcher → Storage & cache → Clear storage.

Permissions

Type Launcher requests Android permissions only for features it implements locally on your device. Data accessed under these permissions is not transmitted off your device by the app.

• Query installed apps (QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES / launcher app queries): read the list of apps installed on your device so they can be shown and launched.
• Read calendar (READ_CALENDAR): read calendar events from your device to render the Agenda screen and, if you turn on “Search calendar events” in Settings, to match upcoming events in home screen search. Event data is read on demand from CalendarContract and is never stored beyond the in-memory state of the current session.
• Read contacts (READ_CONTACTS): requested only if you turn on “Search contacts” in Settings, and used to show matching contacts — their names and photo thumbnails — in home screen search. Contact data is read from ContactsContract and is never stored beyond the in-memory state of the current session; turning the setting off releases it immediately.
• Modify contacts (WRITE_CONTACTS): requested only the first time you use a contact’s long-press menu to favorite or unfavorite it, and used solely to set that contact’s starred flag (ContactsContract.Contacts.STARRED) in your contacts app. No other contact fields are read or changed by it, nothing is sent off the device, and a denial simply leaves the contact unchanged.
• Place calls (CALL_PHONE): requested the first time you tap Call on a contact’s quick actions, and used solely to dial the number you chose — either by handing it to Android’s telephony service or, if you set Settings → “Call using” to “Ask which app”, by asking Android which of your apps should place it. Either way the call is routed by Android’s phone subsystem and your phone app, exactly as if you had dialed it there. If you deny the permission, tapping Call opens your default phone app with the number pre-filled instead, so nothing is ever dialed without the permission. The app places no calls on its own and dials nothing you didn’t tap.
• Expand status bar (EXPAND_STATUS_BAR): expand the system notification shade when you pull down on the home screen.

What the app does not do

• It does not contact a backend service operated by the developer.
• It does not collect your name, email, phone number, location, or device identifiers (IMEI, advertising ID, etc.). Contacts and calendar events are read on your device only for the opt-in search and agenda features described under “Permissions” and are never stored beyond the current session or transmitted.
• It does not log or transmit your search queries.
• It does not log or transmit the names or contents of your installed apps, notifications, contacts, calendar events, or widgets.
• It does not show ads.
• It does not sell or share data with third parties for marketing.

Anonymous crash reporting and performance analytics

With your permission, Type Launcher collects anonymous crash reports and performance analytics, typically through a third-party service such as Google Firebase (for example, Firebase Crashlytics and Firebase Performance Monitoring). The specific service or services used may change over time.

These services may collect:

• Crash stack traces and the type of unhandled exception that caused them.

• A short rolling buffer of non-PII diagnostic breadcrumbs describing launcher lifecycle events (for example, “cold start began”, “agenda load completed”, “app icon cache miss”). These breadcrumbs do not include your search queries or the keys you press, the names or package names of your installed apps, contact names, photos or identifiers, calendar contents or identifiers, or notification contents.

  Each breadcrumb is a fixed sentence written into the app’s source, plus values filled into it. A value is only included if its type cannot name anything of yours — a count, a duration, a time, a setting, a yes or no. Times are the app’s own: when a previous run of the launcher ended, and when this build was installed or last updated, which together say whether it disappeared because the installer was replacing it. Anything that could identify you or something of yours is replaced with <redacted> before the breadcrumb leaves your device, and that is the default for every value the app does not explicitly mark otherwise. The full breadcrumb, with the values intact, stays on your device, where you can read it and choose whether to share it with the Report bug action.

• Anonymous performance traces (for example, how long cold start, agenda loading, or icon loading took) and high-level counters (for example, icon cache hit rate).
• A snapshot of your launcher settings and counts attached to each crash report, so a crash can be diagnosed without you having to send anything: the values you picked in Settings (app list layout, dock layout, icon size, sort order, theme, icon shape, and whether the dock, agenda, wallpaper, contact search, and calendar search are on), coarse app state (which page was open, whether the launcher was on screen, whether Type Launcher is your default launcher), and how many apps, docked apps, hidden apps, dock folders, widgets, and widget pages you have. These are counts and settings only — never which apps, which widgets, or what you searched for.
• Standard device and app metadata that the analytics service collects automatically: device model, OS version, app version, locale, and a service-generated installation identifier that is not tied to your Google account or to any PII collected by the app.

This information is used solely to diagnose crashes and performance regressions and to improve the app. When Firebase is the provider, data is processed by Google as a sub-processor; see Google’s Firebase privacy and security documentation for details on its handling.

Nothing is sent until you say yes

Type Launcher asks. Settings shows an Anonymous analytics card with Don’t allow and Allow, and the Settings gear carries a dot until you answer it one way or the other. Both services are switched off until you allow them, so nothing in this section is uploaded while the question is unanswered. Ignoring the card is therefore a complete answer on its own; you never have to act to keep it off.

To be exact about the guarantee: what is switched off is sending. Crashlytics can still write a crash record to your own device’s storage, but an unanswered question is treated as a no, so that record is discarded on the next launch rather than held for you to consent to later. A crash that happened before you answered is not sent even if you later allow — only crashes after that are.

The stored default is off, so this holds from the first launch of a fresh install onward — there is no window in which anything is sent because nobody has told the app not to yet.

Changing your mind

Settings → Analytics turns crash reporting and performance analytics on or off at any time, and answers the question if the card is still showing. The choice persists across restarts and updates.

Turning it off — or tapping Don’t allow — also discards any crash report that has been recorded but not yet sent, so a crash that happened while it was off is not uploaded later if you turn it back on.

Turning it off does not affect the on-device debug log or the Report bug action — that report is assembled on your device, and nothing is sent until you choose an app to send it to and can review what it contains first.

Children

Type Launcher is a general-purpose launcher utility and is not directed at children under 13. The app does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially, the updated version will be published in this repository and the “Last updated” date at the top of this document will be revised.

Contact

For questions about this policy, please open an issue at https://github.com/mikelward/typelauncher/issues.