Introducing Inglenook: A Simpler Android Home App for Your Parents

If someone you love is struggling with their phone, the problem usually isn’t the person — it’s the phone.

Standard Android home screens are built for people who want to do everything: manage apps, customise widgets, swipe between pages, dig into folders. For an older adult who mainly wants to call family and open a handful of apps, that complexity isn’t just unnecessary — it actively gets in the way.

Inglenook is a free Android home app that replaces the default home screen with something quieter. The layout is simple by design: a clock, a grid of favourite apps, and a strip of pinned contacts. The apps sit in a consistent alphabetical grid — they never move, never rearrange, never get buried. Pinned contacts sit right on the home screen as photo cards. Tapping one places a call in two taps from unlock. No dialler, no searching through a contacts list.

Everything stays where you put it.

Set up once, hand it over

Inglenook is designed to be configured by whoever manages the phone — a daughter, a son, a carer — and then handed over. A short onboarding flow walks you through adding favourite apps, pinning contacts, and setting Inglenook as the default. After that, there’s nothing for your parent to figure out.

Available now

Inglenook is free to download. Head to the Google Play Store to install it, then follow our getting started guide to set it up in a few minutes.