⚠️ This software runs on a vehicle head unit. Do not interact with it while driving. Read DISCLAIMER.md before installing. MG and MG4 are third-party marks used only to identify compatibility; this independent project is not affiliated with or approved by SAIC Motor or MG Motor.
A simple custom home launcher for the MG4 head unit (1920×720, landscape): a grid of up to 12 favourite apps, an all-apps drawer, and a customisable metrics page, in the suite's dark Material 3 theme.
EVLauncher is independent. It needs no other EVSuite app; its metrics page reads the vehicle through the shared EVHardware layer (read-only).
EVLauncher is one app of EVSuite, a family of independent, offline-first apps for the MG4 head unit (Android Automotive OS 9). Each app installs on its own — pick only what you need. User guides and install instructions: https://malys.github.io/EVSuite/.
Discover the rest of the suite:
- Part of EVSuite
- Screenshots
- Upgrading from an earlier build
- Features
- Changing a pinned app
- Second screen (metrics)
- Install
- Building
- Project documents
- Security
- Contributing
- Legal
The application id changed from com.mg4.launcher.simple to com.evsuite.launcher,
and the app is now signed with the EVSuite platform key (the same key as the other
EVSuite apps). Either change alone forces a fresh install: uninstall the previous
version first, then install the new one, then set it as the default home again from
Android settings. Favorites are stored per-app, so they are reset.
- Swipeable two-page home: a horizontal carousel (
ViewPager2). Swipe left/right between the launcher home (page 1) and a customisable, read-only metrics screen (page 2) that carries head-unit and vehicle values in one grid. A SAIC-style bar indicator at the bottom centre shows the current page. The home is always page 1, so pressing Home lands on the favourites grid whatever you last swiped to. - Favorite cards (page 1): a grid of cards, each launching one app of your choice — up to 12. Tap a card to open its app; long-press to replace or remove it. The last tile is always a +, which is how a new app is added. Rows and columns follow the number of cards (1 row up to 4 apps, 2 rows up to 8, 3 rows beyond), so the tiles stay as large as the count allows.
- Fourth column:
- All apps (top card): every launchable app, in a grid.
- Two fixed shortcuts (bottom card): the Android 9 default Files and Settings apps, side by side as icons.
- System apps: inside the All apps drawer, the header filters system apps
(
FLAG_SYSTEM) and provides a back button to return home. - App info shortcut: long-press any entry in the app drawer to jump straight to its Android app-info screen.
- EVSuite manager: the EVSuite button checks stable/offline GitHub releases only on request, shows changelogs, and downloads verified APKs for manual installation (see Install).
- EVSuite theme: dark Material 3 on the shared
ev_*colour and spacing tokens, with the suite's 72 dp touch target. Dark is imposed rather than following the system: the screen faces the driver at night, and a light background filling the windscreen is glare, not a preference. - Persisted favorites: the chosen apps are saved across reboots (a home page built with an older three-slot version is migrated on first launch).
Long-press a card to choose between replace and remove; replacing opens the app picker. To add one, tap the trailing + tile and pick an app. Your choices are saved across reboots.
Swipe right from the home to reach the metrics page (MetricsFragment /
res/layout/fragment_metrics.xml). It is one customisable grid of head-unit and
vehicle values, refreshed while the page is visible — the system cards every 3 s, the
vehicle snapshot at most every 5 s.
Customising it works exactly like the home page: tap the trailing + tile to open the full-screen metric picker, long-press a card to replace or remove it. Up to twelve cards, laid out on one, two or three rows. Your choices are saved across reboots.
A fresh install shows the seven cards the two old fixed pages showed:
- Device: manufacturer + model, Android version (release · API), uptime, and the installed launcher version.
- Memory: used / total RAM.
- Storage: free / total internal storage.
- Network: active connection type (Wi-Fi / mobile / Ethernet / offline) and, on Wi-Fi, the negotiated link speed.
- Charge: state of charge, in percent.
- Range: remaining range, in kilometres.
- Charging: the charging state — charging on AC or DC, plugged in and not charging, complete, faulted, or unplugged — with whether the port is connected underneath it.
The picker offers forty-three metrics in two sections.
Head unit — device, chipset, CPU load, memory, storage, network, IP address, data used today / this month / since boot, date, time, weather, uptime, Android version, kernel, screen, launcher version.
The weather card is the only one that asks for a permission. It reads the head unit's own weather service, which answers for a position, so the location permission is requested the first time you display the card — never at launch — and the position subscription lives only while the page is on screen. Add no weather card and the launcher never asks and never subscribes.
Vehicle — what this car actually answers: charge, range, charging, outside temperature,
gear, and the climate state (power, A/C, auto, eco, recirculation, fan, driver and passenger
targets). They come from the SAIC vendor services, which need no car permission, which is why
they work. The standard AAOS metrics that used to be offered alongside them — speed, cabin
temperature, odometer, charge port, tyre pressures, battery power / energy / capacity /
temperature — are gone: every one is behind a car permission this launcher does not hold,
so none could ever show a number. docs/CR-011-metrics-page.md lists which and why re-adding
one is a separate boundary review.
A value the car does not report is shown as —, never as zero, with a caption saying
which kind of silence it is: no vehicle data when the vehicle layer is not answering at all,
unavailable on this car when everything else answered and this one signal did not.
Every value comes from EVHardware, the suite's shared vehicle layer. The launcher holds no
property id, no vendor transaction and no setter of its own, and VehicleBoundaryTest fails
the build if one appears. Two read-only car permissions are held —
android.car.permission.CAR_ENERGY and android.car.permission.CAR_VENDOR_EXTENSION — and
neither permits a write. Nothing is read while the page is off-screen, nothing is stored, and
a driver who never swipes this far never binds the vehicle layer at all.
Which permissions were deliberately refused, and what a now-playing card would have cost:
docs/CR-010-vehicle-page.md. Why the vehicle page and the
system page later became one customisable grid, and which metrics a refused permission keeps
at —: docs/CR-011-metrics-page.md.
Download the APK from the releases page
(stable tags; the rolling unstable pre-release is the other channel), copy it
to the head unit, then park the car, open Files, select the APK, review Android's app
name and permissions, and tap Install. Set EVLauncher as the default home from Android
settings (see Upgrading if you had an earlier build).
To fetch other EVSuite apps from the launcher itself: All apps → EVSuite, tap Refresh to check each app's latest stable/offline GitHub release, select a version to read its changelog, then choose Download APK and a save location, and install it from Files as above. Repositories and package names use a fixed allowlist, every APK must carry the suite signing certificate, and the launcher cleans private EVSuite APKs after export.
Standard Android project (Java, AGP 9.1.1, Gradle 9.3.1, compileSdk 36, minSdk 28 /
targetSdk 34). JDK 17 is required and pinned in mise.toml. The EVHardware submodule is
included as the :evhardware subproject — clone with --recurse-submodules, or run
git submodule update --init before the first build.
mise run build # stable debug APK
mise run build-unstable # unstable debug APK (manual updates only)
mise run test # JVM unit tests, both channels
mise run permissions # permission-drift gate, same check the CI runs
Or directly:
./gradlew assembleStableDebug
./gradlew assembleUnstableDebug
APKs land under app/build/outputs/apk/<channel>/debug/.
To sign locally, in gradle.properties (never committed) or as environment
variables — the same EVSuite platform key used by the other EVSuite apps:
evsuite.keystore=/path/to/platform.keystore
evsuite.keystore.password=…
evsuite.key.alias=platform
evsuite.key.password=…
Two build flavors, like the sibling apps:
- stable — tagged releases with no self-update or installer capability.
- unstable — a pre-release published on every push to
master, also without self-update or installer capability. Application idcom.evsuite.launcher.unstable, so it installs beside a stable build (only one of the two can be the default home at a time).
Both channels update manually. The suite manager validates HTTPS and the GitHub allowlist at every redirect, verifies package identity and the suite certificate, then asks Android where to save the APK. It never invokes an installer, and private temporary APKs are always deleted. See SECURITY.md.
mise run emulator-setup # one-off: SDK images + both AVDs (needs /dev/kvm)
mise run emulator-screen # API 28 at MG4 panel geometry — the useful one for UI work
mise run emulator-car # API 33 Automotive — automotive system UI, wrong OS version
mise run run # build, install and start on whatever device is connected
mise run emulator-stop
Neither profile is faithful on both axes: the vehicle runs AAOS 9 (API 28), but Google
publishes no Automotive system image below API 33. The screen profile is the one that
matters here — the project targets 1920x1080 @ 160dpi
(SWI68-29958-1300R69). The 1920×720 quoted above is the usable app area left under the
system UI; set EMU_HEIGHT=720 in mise.toml and re-run emulator-setup to model that
instead.
The AVDs are named per repo (mg4simple-*), matching the evtasker-* /
evabrp-* convention used by the sibling projects.
mise run run starts the launcher as an ordinary activity — that does not make it the
default home. Use mise run set-home (or press Home on the emulator and pick it in the
chooser) to exercise it as the real launcher.
| Workflow | Trigger | Blocking |
|---|---|---|
tests.yml |
push / PR | JVM unit tests, both channels |
security.yml |
push / PR | permission-drift gate + gitleaks; mobsfscan / semgrep / OWASP are informational SARIF |
unstable.yml |
push to master |
builds and publishes the rolling unstable pre-release |
release.yml |
v* tag |
builds, checks, and publishes the stable APK |
Every uses-permission must be listed with a justification in
.github/security/permission-allowlist.txt, or the build fails.
| Document | What it covers |
|---|---|
| SECURITY.md | Threat model, what the download path guarantees, how to report a vulnerability privately |
| DISCLAIMER.md | No warranty, no liability, and what running this on a vehicle head unit means concretely |
| CONTRIBUTING.md | Ground rules and the checks to run before a PR |
| LICENSE.md | MIT; fork provenance and the upstream's lack of a licence |
| AGENTS.md | Architecture notes for contributors and coding agents |
| DESIGN.md | Interface design rules |
| CHANGELOG.md | Release history |
| docs/CR-010-vehicle-page.md | The vehicle page: layout decision, permissions taken and refused, why no now-playing card |
| docs/CR-011-metrics-page.md | Merging the system and vehicle pages into one customisable metrics grid, and the metrics a refused permission leaves at — |
See SECURITY.md for the threat model and how to report a vulnerability privately.
Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request. In short: this code runs in a moving vehicle, so changes stay small, carry tests, and say in the diff what would break without them. Anything touching the interface follows DESIGN.md.
MIT-licensed — see LICENSE and LICENSE.md. EVLauncher is a fork of Tommasov/EV_Simple_Launcher, which publishes no licence of its own; the MIT licence applies to this fork as published here, and this repository will follow the upstream author if they object or publish a licence.
The full disclaimer lives in DISCLAIMER.md. In short: the software is provided "as is", without warranty, for study and educational purposes; the author accepts no liability for any damage to the vehicle, its infotainment system, software or data, or safety-related consequences. You use it entirely at your own risk. All graphic resources, trademarks and brand names belong to their respective owners.