What's new in each version of DownShift. The newest version is first. DownShift requires Android 14 or later.
2.4.0
New
DownShift Pro. DownShift becomes a paid app on October 29, 2026. Anyone who installed it before then keeps using it free. Later installs choose a plan when onboarding ends: monthly or yearly, each with a 14-day free trial, or a one-time Lifetime purchase. While there is no plan, a screen in front of the home screen offers the plans, Redeem a code, Phone, Emergency call and Use another home app; the home screen layout is kept.
Settings › DownShift Pro: the plans and prices, a sheet explaining the free trial, Redeem a code (Google Play's own screen) and Manage subscription, which first offers subscribers bought here a discount to stay, with cancelling one tap away.
A purchase Google Play has confirmed keeps DownShift open for seven days without a connection.
0.3.3
Fixed
On tablets, the DownShift wallpaper's logo ran past the screen's edges in landscape. It is now about half the screen's width, whichever way the tablet is held. Phones are unchanged.
Right-to-left languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian):
The Control Center's shortcut settings named the wrong side: the left shortcut is drawn on the right in these languages, and is now labelled that way.
Glimpse's message line reads right to left even when the sender's name is in Latin letters.
The DownShift Camera's focus ring appeared on the opposite side from the tap.
The undo arrow pointed the wrong way.
In the light theme, the profile name on the Control Center's pill was white on the light glass over a dark wallpaper. It now takes the glass's own text colour: dark on the light glass, white on the dark.
0.3.1
New
Message sources for Glimpse: Glimpse can show messages from every app, as before, or only from the apps you pick. In Glimpse Settings, under Show messages: a searchable list of apps with their icons, and an "Allow all apps" switch that keeps your picks for later.
Improved
Every language DownShift supports now comes with the app, so changing the phone's language changes DownShift's at once, with nothing to download.
Fixed
A rare crash when making a folder, seen when dropping an app onto a dock app.
0.3.0
New
Glimpse weather worldwide: the US National Weather Service in the United States, and OpenWeather everywhere else. City search finds any city or postcode in the world.
Automatic °F/°C: temperatures follow the country the weather is for (°F in the US), unless Fahrenheit or Celsius is chosen.
Improved
Weather updates every two hours on its own; the refresh-interval setting is gone. Glimpse's refresh button still updates it anytime.
OpenWeather is credited in Glimpse's settings and in About.
Fixed
A layout restored from another DownShift build's backup kept the plain clock instead of Glimpse.
0.2.9
New
DownShift Glimpse: a new clock and weather widget, drawn by DownShift itself, in 2x2, 3x2 and 4x2. Weather is what the nearest US National Weather Service station is observing (US only). A status line can show what's playing, the battery, new messages and a running Silencer's countdown. Set it up in Settings › DownShift Glimpse.
Frosted glass: menus, open folders, sheets, dialogs, the widget pickers, the dock and the profile pill are frosted glass, with the wallpaper softly blurred behind them.
DownShift Camera: a camera on the Control Center bar that saves to Documents/DownShift/Photos, apart from your camera roll, and can scan documents. Each Control Center shortcut can be the Camera, the Silencer, search or any app, per profile.
Lawnicons as an icon style, in each profile's color, and an Icons page with every icon setting, where the home screen, dock and drawer can each have a look of their own.
One wallpaper for both profiles, on a new Wallpapers page with the lock screen, and also set as the system's wallpaper.
Landscape home screen: the home screen fits when the phone is turned, with an arrangement of its own that never moves anything in portrait.
What's New: a sheet after updates, and a Settings › What's New page.
A Blocklist vs Zen Modes guide, and a link from Profiles to the phone's Zen Modes settings.
The pop-up menu page looks like the real menu, with a menu opacity slider and a choice of app menu items. Colors can be set back to "Automatic" to follow the theme.
Improved
Icon shadows are dark enough to see.
The profile name is the bar icons' white, and the bar's icons are a little smaller.
Segmented buttons keep their segments one size, even with long profile names.
About shows "Version: 0.2.9".
Settings that did nothing are gone (Recents screen, app closing animation, experimental font).
Fixed
A fresh install could hang on a black screen at first launch.
Settings › Control Center could crash.
The blur could freeze after turning the phone.
White squares behind some icons, and a crash opening apps with icon backgrounds.
The dock was translated as "pier" in some languages.
0.2.8
New
Dock icon size: Dock settings has its own Icon size slider, like the home screen's. Dock icons follow it alone, and the home screen's slider no longer changes them. It starts at the home screen size, so the dock looks the same after the update.
Improved
The bottom dock's background fits snugly around its icons, evenly on every side, at any icon size.
The control bar sits higher, clear of the system's gesture bar, for easier thumb reach and no accidental swipes home. The dock and home screen move up with it.
The side dock's bottom icon lines up with the home screen's bottom row.
Fixed
After switching the dock between edges, the home screen grid could shrink until the launcher restarted.
0.2.7
New
Profile wallpapers fill the whole screen: a profile's own wallpaper now runs under the status and navigation bars too, instead of the system wallpaper showing there, and the bar icons turn dark or light to stay readable over it, changing with each profile switch.
Search results blend into the drawer: results sit on a light see-through veil instead of solid dark blocks, each section is one rounded box, and the top app has no tile behind it.
Tapping the weather searches the web when no weather app is chosen (it opened a map search before). The setting now reads "Search the web".
Fixed
The weather widget could stay on its placeholder clock, without weather or date, after being placed or resized.
On narrow phones or with large text, the Silencer countdown in the dock could overlap the profile name.
Setup didn't appear if Home was pressed while DownShift first started.
Setup's buttons and pages clipped large text and long translations; they now grow and scroll.
0.2.6
New
DownShift in 77 languages: every language Lawnchair ships now has DownShift's own text too. The 12 from 0.2.5 were written by hand; the other 64, from Afrikaans to Zulu, are machine-translated with Google Cloud Translation, so small corrections are expected and welcome. Three strings stay in English (one each in Amharic, Malayalam and Sinhala).
0.2.5
New
DownShift in 13 languages: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Polish, Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese and Hindi join English, all written by hand rather than machine-translated. DownShift follows the phone's language, or its own language setting in Android's app settings.
Fixed
Profile names left at their defaults, the dock's profile pill and DownShift's Zen modes in Android settings now follow a language change instead of keeping the language they started in. Names you've chosen yourself are kept.
Switching the dock between the left and right edge no longer moves widgets at the top of the home screen; only items in the rows the dock covers move out of its way.
In the profile reset dialog, "This can't be undone." is on its own line again.
0.2.4
Improved
Silencer: tapping the countdown in the dock opens a prompt like the profile switch one, with the time left and pill buttons to add 15 minutes or end Do Not Disturb, in place of the old dropdown menu.
When the Silencer ends and nothing came in, there's no recap to dismiss: it just ends. Without notification access the recap still shows, to say nothing could be counted.
App visibility is quicker to scan: each app is one line with a pill saying where it shows, tapping it offers Personal, Both or Work, and filter chips with counts narrow the list.
Fixed
The launcher no longer holds on to memory each time it's rebuilt, for example after switching dark mode or changing the font size.
0.2.3
New
App visibility: keep an app to Personal or Work in Profiles › App visibility, and the other profile's app drawer and search leave it out completely. Apps start in both, new ones included. With the profile lock on, changing it needs an unlock.
Improved
App suggestions are off by default. They learn from both profiles, so when on they leave out apps kept to the other profile, and turning them on explains that first.
Apps from Android's work profile show the work badge in app lists, so the two copies of an app can be told apart.
The Profiles guide explains app visibility.
0.2.2
Improved
Silencer on the lock screen: on Samsung phones the Silencer shows in the Now Bar as "Silencer" with a live countdown and an End button, ahead of Do Not Disturb.
Starting the Silencer no longer plays a notification sound.
Silencer setup can turn on notification access, so the recap can tell you what arrived. Its steps are named for what they ask: "Allow Notifications" and "Notification Access".
Control Center settings show whether notification access is on, with a shortcut to turn it on.
When notification access is off, the Silencer recap offers to turn it on.
Fixed
The Silencer recap could say notification access was off when the setup had seemed to grant it.
0.2.1
New
14 more clock widget fonts: Edu QLD Hand, Lobster Two, Felipa, Jim Nightshade, Cookie, Kings, Playfair Display SC, Quintessential, Mr Bedfort, Limelight, UnifrakturMaguntia, Fascinate, Audiowide and Bruno Ace SC. The font and weight lists show each one in its own face.
White text colour: the widget text, home screen label and notification counter colour pickers start with a white swatch.
Backup previews for both profiles: creating and restoring a backup shows Personal and Work side by side, each on its own wallpaper with its home screen, dock and widgets.
Horizontal Dock option next to the left and right vertical docks.
Silencer setup in one go: it walks through each permission it needs ("Step 2 of 3") and on to the duration picker, instead of stopping after each one.
Improved
Every font setting starts on Google Sans Flex Regular.
Colour pickers are simpler: preset swatches and a custom colour, without the System and "Managed by DownShift" options.
The clock widget updates as soon as you change its font, weight, colour or background, and comes back straight away after an app update.
While the Silencer is on, the dock shows a struck-through bell on a pill in your accent colour, and its notification shows when it ends, with a progress bar on Android 16 and later.
The dock background covers just the dock's apps, not the search bar or Control Center below.
Onboarding moves on by itself once DownShift is your default home app, and the dock you choose there is applied.
The profile switch prompt keeps Rename, Switch and Cancel on one line, and a locked profile shows a lock badge on the Switch button.
The Silencer notification is titled simply "Silencer".
New installs start with a 90% opaque app drawer.
Fixed
After updating, or restoring a backup, icon labels could switch to a different font.
Restoring a backup could leave the home screen empty when the backup's grid size differed from the current one.
Restoring a backup dropped apps from the Work profile.
Restoring only the wallpaper from a backup erased the home screen layout.
Backups made without the second profile still included it.
A photo picked as a wallpaper once and since replaced still showed in backups.
Changing a profile's label font also changed the home screen's long-press menu.
A crash when Android restored DownShift's data while setting up a phone.
0.2.0
New
Profiles menu: profile names, profile lock, and notification filtering now have their own screen in settings.
Per-profile look: each profile can have its own home screen wallpaper (DownShift wallpaper, a photo, or the system wallpaper), icon label font and label colour. Switching profiles stays instant.
Notification blocklist: pick apps whose notifications are cleared while a profile is active, with a count of what was cleared. Zen Modes remain available as an alternative. Everything stays on your device.
Wallpaper manager: DownShift wallpaper with OLED black, a deeper blue, and an adjustable vignette. New lock screen wallpaper option in General settings.
Clock & weather widget:
Choose which app opens when you tap the time, date or weather.
Fonts, font weights, text colour and an optional background.
Time beside the date and weather at 3 columns and wider; content centred; 1-row sizes.
Improved
Settings reorganised: Control Center first, then Profiles and Clock/Weather Widget.
The DownShift wallpaper no longer resets after the app is updated or restarted.
Silencer: media always keeps playing, and your Do Not Disturb settings are restored afterwards.
Fixed
Icons could be placed behind the vertical dock (drag and drop, widget overlap, new installs, grid changes and backup restores).
Tapping the widget's time did nothing on some phones.
The widget settings screen took a second or two to open.