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ZrnDotMatrix
An Android home screen drawn entirely in LED dots. The clock, the battery, your music and your apps are all lit dots on black.
- When
- 2026
- Built with
- Android, JavaScript, Termux, RIGEL
ZrnDotMatrix is a launcher that draws everything on one grid of round dots. There is no wallpaper and no icon grid. When something changes, the dots fly to their new places: unlock the phone and the whole home screen assembles itself; open an app and the dots spell out its name.
What's on it
- The middle changes with what you're doing. Normally it shows system load. Plug in and it shows the charge. Play music and it becomes a visualiser with controls.
- A dock of five apps. A tile blinks red when that app has a notification.
- Waking up replays the boot. The dots rise out of a random scatter, or pour out of the fingerprint sensor.
- Quick settings are one swipe to the right.
- Six colour palettes and an AMOLED mode.
RIGEL lives in it
One swipe to the left is RIGEL, an assistant you talk to. It runs on the phone itself, inside Termux, and answers on the dot matrix. It can drive the phone: the torch, the volume, the clipboard. Ask it for a new icon and it draws one. Ask it for something the launcher can't do and it can write that too, like water that sloshes across the screen when you shake the phone. Anything it changes can be undone.
It is easy on the battery: the screen only redraws when something on it changes.