Quiet the noise, together.

Contents

The Process.

Eight chapters, three versions. From a design prompt for a creamy home screen to a launcher with a mascot in the notch. Read it the way it happened, or jump to a part.

Spark · Two strangers

It started with a text after a conference.

Srinivas and I met at FOSS United India in Bengaluru. A message afterwards became a project. He builds, I design, and both of us had uninstalled every blocker, launcher and screen-time tracker we ever tried.

Spark · Ten friends

What would make you switch launchers?

Ten-minute interviews with friends, ten questions each, and a Google Form beside them. The worst moment was always the same: scrolling after ten at night, out of boredom. When we asked what would make them switch, the answer came back twice in the same words.

Spark · The brief

A home screen that keeps you honest.

The brief was written for Figma, down to the pixel, under the working name Monk Mode. Two cards at the top, your numbers on the left and your buddy's on the right, so the first thing you see when you unlock is how the day is going for both of you.

Spark · Why a launcher

Meet the habit where it starts.

Blockers fight the phone after you are already inside an app. A launcher is the phone: it is the first thing you touch on every unlock, so it is the one place a pause can come before the habit, not after it.

Problem · Three habits

Unlocks, usage, scrolls.

We named three problems on day one and every feature still answers one of them. Each gets its own mechanism, its own number and its own moment on screen.

1. 01

   Mindful unlocks

   The reflex pickup. Most unlocks have no reason behind them.

   7 sa breath before the home screen
2. 02

   Mindful usage

   Screen time is a private number, and private numbers are easy to ignore.

   1 buddywho sees yours, and you theirs
3. 03

   Mindful scrolls

   Feeds have no floor. Nothing ever says “that's enough”.

   20 minuntil a gentle interruption

Problem · What launchers miss

Minimal is not the same as mindful.

Minimal launchers remove the icons and stop there. Our hack entry put the gap plainly, five ways, and the last one is the designer's own complaint.

• BoringText lists that feel like a punishment, so people switch back in a week.
• No help with timeThey hide apps but never tell you how the day went.
• No one else in itNo social layer, so there is nobody to keep the promise for.
• No mindful unlockThe pickup itself, where the habit starts, is never touched.
• Old brand styles“Too old brand styles, bro.” Calm can still be beautiful.

Problem · Hooked, unhooked

Cut the loop, move the reward.

Apps are built on the hook model: trigger, action, variable reward, investment, around and around. ZenMode keeps the loop and cuts it. The reward sits outside the path, earned by putting the phone down, and that cut became the logo.

Problem · The Unhooked Cycle

Yes, it's the hook model. Run in reverse.

Trigger, action, reward, investment: the same four steps feeds use to keep you scrolling. ZenMode runs them the other way round. The trigger is your own decision, the action is one search, the reward is time and gold, and the investment is a friend.

System · Seven seconds

A breath before the home screen.

Unlock the phone and ZenMode asks for seven seconds first. No lock, no shame, just enough time for the hand to remember why it picked the phone up. If there was no reason, the easiest thing to do is put it back.

System · Twenty minutes

A floor under the feed.

After twenty minutes of continuous scrolling, a card slides over the feed in the voice of a friend, not a warden. Deep work gets an out: “don't remind me for the next four hours”, because the first version covered the whole screen even on work sites, and a tester said so.

System · Zen Buddy

Someone to keep the promise for.

Pick your Zen Buddy, a friend, a parent, a partner, or let Random Connect match you with a stranger on the same path. You see each other's screen time and unlocks, never app names. It is the one thing no other launcher had.

1. Sharebuddy_share_started
2. Copybuddy_code_copied
3. Pastebuddy_code_pasted
4. Connectedbuddy_connected

Pairing is a code you send in any chat app, so there is no contact access and no account wall.

System · One funnel

The pause worked. The buddy didn't, yet.

We instrumented V1 in PostHog, the open-source analytics tool, before anyone installed it. The first thirty people to finish onboarding told us two things at once: the mindful unlock was landing, and almost nobody got as far as a buddy. So the buddy, the reason people said they'd switch, became V2's whole job.

V1 activation funnel, closed testing. Real counts from the PostHog dashboard.

System · Open core

Open source from day one.

A launcher sees everything, so it should be readable by anyone. The first version leaned on Firebase and wasn't fully open; the split fixed that. “A clean clone builds and runs with no keys.” Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Room on device, GPL-3.0.

• Default launcherto be the home screen
• Usage accessfor the score, on device
• Draw over appsfor the pause
• Accessibilityonly for the lock button
• Notificationsfor nudges

Every permission, and the one thing it is used for. Buddies see a score, never the log.

Ship · Version one

Cream, retro, and very quiet.

V1 began as the brief almost literally: Monk Mode, a 70s-radio launcher in cream and amber with pixel numbers. Within weeks it flipped to black, took the name ZENMODE, and gave the buddy cards a face. Zeno's first ancestors were three moods, green, yellow and red.

←01 / 06→

Ship · Twelve testers

Twelve testers, one countdown.

V1 went into closed testing two minutes before midnight. Twelve testers opted in within 230 hours, enough to start Google's fourteen-day clock, and we counted it down out loud: “a day to go”, “six more days to gooo”.

←01 / 04→

Ship · Version two

The roll-out that went public.

V2 was built from what the testers said, almost line by line, and rolled out in full. Every complaint has an answer on the right. Then a Play Store relaunch with a line everyone's mother has said: “Mom was right, it's that damn phone, bro.”

• “The colour is too bright”Dark, light and a creamy layer, and green as the one accent.
• “Swiping to find apps is slow”Search, then long-press to pin.
• “It stopped me paying a bill”GPay and camera on the pause screen.
• “Same icon for two permissions”An animated GIF for each permission, showing which toggle to tap.
• “Minutes are hard to read”Screen time in hours and minutes.
• “The popup covers my work too”A four-hour snooze for focused sessions.

Video: Video trailer for the ZenMode V2 Play Store listing on a bright green background

←01 / 08→

Together · 100 in 12 hours

The first hundred Zeners.

We entered FOSS United's India FOSS Hack '26 with ZenMode and went live during it. The first hundred users, we started calling them Zeners, arrived within twelve hours. PostHog's launch-week cohort read 101; store visits for the month were up more than 999%.

←01 / 02→

Together · The booth

A table, a pledge and forty-five stickers.

For FOSS United Chennai at IIT Madras, Srini and I turned up in Zen green. I designed the #InMyZone stickers, a “make your first FOSS contribution” note with a QR to the repo, and a Mindful Digital Time Pledge people signed. Freebies only after you tried the launcher or followed the repo, so every sticker meant a real touch. Then it became a monthly booth.

←01 / 06→

“I really liked the stickers that they created and the intention and thought process that they have put into creating them.”

Together · A thousand homes

1,010 phones, and counting.

The Play Console crossed 1.01K. A launcher is a big ask, it replaces the home screen, so every one of those installs is someone who let ZenMode be the first thing they see.

←01 / 02→

Together · Finding their quiet

People are finding their quiet.

The wall from zenmodeos.com, running as it does on the site: real Play Store reviews, scrolling slowly in three columns, the middle one against the others. Hover to stop it and read.

V3 · The shift

Use was never the enemy.

V1 and V2 were built on a quiet assumption: every minute on the phone was a minute lost. We counted all of it, paused all of it, and treated Instagram itself as the villain. V3 starts from the other end. Thirty minutes of Instagram, chosen on purpose, is a fine evening. The problem is the pickup nobody planned and the scroll nobody decided on, so that is the only thing V3 tries to fix.

V3 · Time, no goals

One sentence changed the roadmap.

Talking to users before V3, the same thing kept coming back. They weren't short on time. They were short on a reason to spend it differently. So V3 had to turn time saved into something you can see grow.

V3 · The board

Eight flows, a timer, a vote.

Srinivas and I ran V3 out of one FigJam board: eight deep-dive flows, timed rounds, dot votes, then an order of priority. Then one hand-off, so design and code shipped the same screens.

1. 01Apps & in-app blocks
2. 02Onboarding
3. 03Gold, the fintech layer
4. 04Community
5. 05A better Zen Buddy
6. 06Zen Score, swipe right
7. 07Shareable cards
8. 08Home & one search

ZenMode OS · BrainstormingFigJam Pause Whole board ⤢

Video: A 17-second camera move over the ZenMode OS brainstorming board in FigJam: close on one flow card, out to the whole board, across the site revisions and the design hand-off, and in to the Zen Gold flow, with private notes blurred

←01 / 02→

V3 · How we build

From one requirement doc to a merged PR.

Two people and Claude, one loop. We decide together in FigJam. Each of us writes the source of truth Claude builds from, and the other signs it off. Then we ship one feature at a time, tested and reviewed.

V3 · Zen Gold

Less screen time turns gold.

Make a screen-time promise. Keep it five days out of seven and Gold Invest unlocks for the week: ₹25, 50 or 100 a day into a gold ETF, through Zerodha, into your own demat account. ZenMode never touches the money. Badges and streaks are just more dopamine; this points the habit at something real, outside the phone.

One hierarchy decision mattered more than any other on this screen. Screen time is the hero, then the forecast, then the gold. Lead with the rupee and ZenMode reads as an investment app; lead with the hours and the gold reads as what they earned.

←01 / 05→

V3 · Everything in V3

One launcher. Everything that helps you stop.

The bento from zenmodeos.com, every tile live. Hover one, or tap on a phone, and it plays the feature it describes: search that shows the time left before you tap, the score counting up, the pause counting down. Each tile only works on unintentional use; the rest of your phone is left alone.

V3 · Measuring it

Seven flows, one naming rule.

V1 measured thirty people through one funnel, and it was enough to find the buddy drop. V3 ships with a tracking plan for every flow, in PostHog and GA4. Each event has one name everywhere, a hashed user id, and a line that says what success looks like. Pick a flow.

From the V3 analytics event tracking plan. Targets are goals the team set, not results. Search queries are hashed or redacted before they are stored.

V3 · Going live

A trailer, a site, a launch day.

V3 shipped with a Play Store listing in ZenMode green, a trailer, a new zenmodeos.com, printed Supporter Passes for the first thousand, and a Product Hunt launch. Two people, one launch weekend, and a community that tried it and told us the truth.

←01 / 07→

Albeit · The brand book

Thirty sections, one cut square.

Albeit is the whole system in one scrolling page: the story, the craft, Zeno across every device, and the rules underneath. It's live below. Open it here and scroll through all of it without leaving the case study.

Albeit · The mark

A square, one cut, one dot.

Start with a 100 px square. Cut it twice on the diagonal, 8 px wide. Round every corner by 8. Drop a 12 px dot in the middle. Same topology as the hook loop, one cut. The single fixed dot is the anti-variable reward. Turn it 45° at a time and it spells Z, E, N; the fourth turn is Zeno.

←01 / 08→

• Primary lockupMark, then ZenMode, then OS, spaced by the kerning marks in the sheet. OS always wears the score gradient, ember to amber to green.
• Vertical lockupFor square spaces: the stickers, the booth, the app icon's store page.
• Icon-only & monoFive fills: gradient green, flat green, black, deep green and white. The dot is always cut out, never drawn on.

Albeit · Zen Score

One number, out of ten.

Everything the launcher knows comes down to one score a day. Three quarters is your promise, one quarter is how calm the sessions were. Move the sliders: the bar runs ember to amber to green, because green does the work.

Albeit · Colour & type

Green does the work. Gold is earned.

V1 was cream and brown. Albeit keeps the warm paper and gives the work to one green. Amber and ember are rewards and warnings, so they never decorate. Three typefaces, three voices: a display face, a reading face and a pixel face for numbers.

• Brand#0F7A18the work
• Brand soft#5BDF62on night
• Amber#FFC800gold, earned
• Ember#FF6600a limit is close
• Paper#F2F1ECthe ground
• Night#12160Fthe other ground

• No streak confettiCelebration is a dopamine slot machine. Zeno smiles instead.
• No badge countsA red number is a trigger. The home screen has none.
• One reward hue per screenGold or ember, never both, and only when it is earned.
• Seven sounds, mutedD-major pentatonic, off by default, never louder than −18 dBFS.

Albeit · Zeno

Eight feelings. Each one earns its moment.

Zeno is built from the mark, so it could never be anyone else. It feels with its ears, lids and mouth: ears up is good news, ears down is a hard day, and colour follows the moment. These are the brand book's own cards, running live. Hover one to say hello.

Albeit · A month of light

Your month, drawn as a horizon.

The Zen Horizon is cut from paper, drawn from data and lit by one of its own hours. The far range is your day, hour by hour; four hills are your four weeks, so a calm month is a low, wide horizon. The one bright cell is the hour of the month you were most mindful, lit.

Albeit · Across devices

One score, every screen, within a second.

Then the system stretched past Android: a ZenMode island drawn by the launcher, a watch that keeps time while the phone stays face down, iPad, Mac and a fold. Each screen sends totals, never the raw record. Then the first iOS build ran in the simulator.

←01 / 08→

Albeit · Analytics

Kamal's day, added up across every screen.

Each screen measures its own time; ZenMode adds them into one honest picture. Position is always the screen. Colour is always how the time felt. Switch the day, hover anything, or read it as a table.

Albeit · Sync

Every screen shows the same number within a second.

Screens send totals, never the raw record. The account adds them into one Zen Score and sends it back out. Focus on one screen quiets the rest, and Zeno only speaks on the screen you're using.

Albeit · On the App Store

Ten screens, one horizon.

The iOS listing is built from real screens of the app, captured from a build, with three night shots to punctuate the strip. One horizon of lit cells runs unbroken across all ten, so neighbouring shots read as a single panorama while you swipe through the store.

The strip, end to end · drag along the horizon

Shots 04, 07 and 10 are designed concepts for features still being built: the Live Activity, the Shield and the month report.

Reflection · Lessons

What I'd tell the first version of us.

1. 01

   Intent, not time

   V1 counted every minute. V3 asks why. Thirty minutes on purpose is a good day.

2. 02

   Measure the promise

   The funnel showed the buddy was the drop before any review did. Instrument V1.

3. 03

   Remove, then add

   “Feature removal → v1, v2, v3!” Every version got better by what it dropped.

4. 04

   Rooms beat ads

   A booth, a pledge and real stickers did more than any budget we didn't have.

5. 05

   Calm can be beautiful

   Minimal doesn't have to be grey. Albeit gave calm a mascot and a colour.

Reflection

Final thoughts before you put the phone down.

Epilogue · Where it began

It began with a conversation.

At the IndiaFOSS annual meet, the day Srinivas and I first met, we told Kailash Nadh we wanted to build something meaningful. He offered to help with Kite Connect and asked us to write to him. So we did.

From our note to Kailash

Hi Kailash,

You probably won't remember us, but we told you we wanted to build something meaningful. So we went and built it.

Thank you for everything you've done to make FOSS in India what it is today.

Warmly,
Kamalraaj & SrinivasZenMode OS

Nearly everything here happened in spaces he helped build.