🖥️ Use the App as Your Home Screen

Level: Beginner • Flavor: Standard / noLegal

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FastMediaSorter can replace your device’s home screen with its own desktop - your folders, a clock, the weather, your apps, and a taskbar along one edge. If you have ever used a Windows desktop it will feel familiar: things stay where you put them, and a Start button opens the menu. This is called launcher mode.

Real example: an old tablet on the kitchen wall. Instead of a grid of app icons you get the clock, today’s weather, the photo folder from your NAS and a button that starts the radio - all on the screen it shows when it wakes up.

What You Will Need

Step 1 - Turn Launcher Mode On

  1. Open Settings → General
  2. Turn on Make this app the home screen
  3. Android asks you to confirm. On Android 10 and newer it is a single question - “Allow FastMediaSorter to be your Home app?” - so allow it. On older versions the classic chooser appears the next time you press Home: pick FastMediaSorter and tap Always, or Just once to try it out first.
  4. Press Home

Just installed the app? There is a shortcut: tick Use as home screen on the first welcome page. Setup is not interrupted by a system dialog - Android’s confirmation comes up the first time you open Settings → General afterwards.

Step 2 - Look at What You Already Have

The desktop is not an empty grid on day one. It arrives holding about a dozen useful things: a clock, the weather where you are, your folders, a search box.

Cell type What it does
Resource shortcut Opens a folder you added - and you choose whether it opens in browse, slideshow or play mode
Gadget A clock with seconds (tap it for alarms), the weather, what is playing right now, a translator, and two dozen more
App shortcut Starts any installed app; long-press lists that app’s own quick actions
Contact cell Opens a person’s card, calls them, sends an SMS, or opens their messenger conversation
App widget The same widgets the app offers for the Android home screen, placed here instead

Step 3 - Use the Taskbar and the Start Menu

The taskbar sits along the bottom edge. It holds the Start button, the apps you used recently, the ones you pinned, and a small tray with the clock, battery, network and SIM signal.

Step 4 - Put Your Own Things on the Desktop

  1. Long-press an empty square of the desktop
  2. Four choices appear: Add an item.., Edit the desktop, Wallpaper, Launcher settings
  3. Choose Add an item.. and pick what goes there: an app, a feature, one of your folders, a radio stream, a person, a system action, a scheduled operation, a gadget, or an action

The new cell lands exactly on the square you pressed.

Among the gadgets are the now-playing card - it shows whatever is playing on the device and takes you to that player with one tap - and the translator cell.

Step 5 - Rearrange It

Edit the desktop turns on edit mode, the same as Edit desktop contents in the Start menu. While editing:

Sharing the device with someone? Turn on Lock desktop in launcher settings. The long-press then does nothing, so the layout cannot be nudged by accident.

Portrait and landscape are two separate desktops. What you arrange upright is not what you get when you turn the device sideways - each orientation keeps its own layout and its own collapsed sections. The settings themselves (taskbar position, density, wallpaper) are shared by both.

Want more, or fewer, cells on screen? Settings → General → System launcher settings → Desktop → Grid density offers Sparse, Standard, Dense and Very dense.

Want the wallpaper to show through? Settings → General → System launcher settings → Desktop → Widget backdrop opacity sets how solid a gadget cell looks at rest - from fully transparent, so the wallpaper shows straight through, to an opaque card. Edit mode always draws the full card, so a cell stays easy to grab while you are arranging.

Step 6 - Go Back to Your Old Home Screen

Any of these three works:

Your desktop layout is kept either way, so switching launcher mode back on brings it back exactly as you left it.

Tips

Wall tablet or car head unit? Pair launcher mode with Prevent Sleep in Settings → General so the desktop stays visible while the device is on a charger.

Want the full reference? Every option, table and corner case lives in the Use the App as Your Home Screen section of the user manual. This guide covers switching it on and the first steps; that section covers the rest.

Other apps can put their own shortcuts here, exactly as they would on any other home screen.

Troubleshooting

Problem What to try
Make this app the home screen is missing from Settings → General Your build does not include launcher mode. It ships in Standard and noLegal only - check Settings → About for the edition you have
The device goes back to its own home screen after a restart Some aftermarket car radios and built-in Android boxes force their factory home screen back on every start. That is the device’s firmware overriding you, and no app can work around it - pick FastMediaSorter again after the restart, and if it still will not stick, that device does not allow it
Android never asked which home app to use Press Home once - on older Android versions the chooser appears then, not at the moment you flip the switch
The desktop looks empty after turning it on Press Home rather than staying inside the app - the pre-filled desktop is what Android shows as the home screen
Cells move when you did not mean to move them Turn on Lock desktop in Settings → General → System launcher settings
Rotating the device shows a different arrangement Expected - portrait and landscape keep separate layouts. Arrange the one you use, or arrange both