A blogger with 300k subscribers turned their phone home screen into a mixing console: 3580 installs, #12 in Japan's Personalization Top Grossing

Japanese gadget YouTuber Hideki Horiguchi (堀口英剛) built an Android home screen himself. The home screen looks like a sampler and mixing console, it's free, and if you like it you can buy it outright for ¥490. Two months after launch it ranked #12 on the Japan Google Play Personalization Top Grossing chart, right next to launchers with tens of millions of installs, while it had only 3580 installs itself. This piece explains how it got going, how much that ranking is worth, and what you can take from it without a 300k-follower audience.

A post: "I love the shape of the Fold8 so much..."

In 2026 Aug 16, Hideki Horiguchi (channel monograph, 304k subscribers, vidIQ 10-31) posted on X: "I love the shape of the Galaxy Z Fold8 so much... so I made an original home screen app." The post got 270k views. That same month he posted a video, 「究極にミニマルな『ホーム画面』作ってみた」(I made an ultra-minimal "home screen"), which reached about 11-06k plays by 152. In the video he recruited closed beta testers. Someone on the Samsung Japan community reshared it saying sign-ups passed 1000 people in one evening and closed early.

It officially launched on Sep 27. The launch post's first line: "The row of colorful apps on your phone's home screen looks like ads all shouting 'tap me!'" The next line was the pricing: "Free to use first. If you like it, buy me a latte (¥490) and keep using it free forever."

This isn't the first time he's touched this topic. Three years ago he posted a video on making a phone home screen minimal (34k plays). Around June this year he also posted "After a month of Claude as a complete beginner" with 1.1M plays, about using AI to build a pile of small tools for himself. M.P.C. is most likely an extension of that line: a non-programmer YouTuber used AI to build the home screen he'd been imagining for years.

What it is: the pads are apps, the knobs are folders, the faders are volume

M.P.C. stands for monograph panel controller. The store listing is blunt: it turns the home screen into "a control panel for a music device: sampler, mixer, MIDI controller."

• Pads = apps: tap to open. Pull a pad down and it stretches like a rubber band; release to open a second app. The pad glows orange when there's a notification.
• Knobs = folders: tap to open, and the popup appears right above the knob. When you page through, the knob really spins with momentum.
• Faders = sliders: VOL directly controls media volume, BRT controls screen brightness. APP faders rest in the middle; push one to an end to open an app, and it springs back when released.

Two more selling points: it supports the large screen and split-screen on the Fold8 (a YouTube comment said Smart Launcher doesn't support split-screen, while M.P.C. does). And its privacy policy says it "collects and sends no data, and includes no analytics or ad SDKs."

Where users came from: all from the author himself

Every traceable source points back to the author:

No paid ads found, no TikTok campaigns, no English media coverage or Reddit threads. The download-site pages are auto-generated.

The closed beta step is worth calling out. Google Play now requires new personal developer accounts to run a closed test before a full launch, and many indie devs get stuck finding enough testers. He turned that gate into a fan event: signing up was itself "I want to be in the first batch," and on launch day he wrote "officially launched today with the help of 1000 testers." Clearing the gate also gave him the first users and the first ratings.

Where the money comes from: a latte, and a cheap ranking

¥490 (about $3.09) as a one-time purchase, an in-app purchase on Play. The reviews show who's buying:

• "Someone with no taste like me can still make it look minimal and good." (5 stars, Play review transcribed by applion)
• "Right when I switched from iPhone to Android, M.P.C. launched. Congrats! Here's a latte to support you." (5 stars)
• "Such high satisfaction for only ¥490. Horiguchi-san, please let me pay more." (reshared on X)

The people paying are tipping someone they know. 180 ratings against 3580 installs is about 5%, high for a utility app, and it looks like fans.

Take the "Top Grossing #12" ranking with a grain of salt. 11-06 On the same Japan Personalization Top Grossing chart, it sits between Niagara (18M installs), Smart Launcher 6 (55.3M) and ThemeKit (62.1M). It can chart there, which tells you the bar on this chart is low: a few 490 yen a day is enough. Its Top Free rank sits between #115 and #190. Revenue is not public. Assuming 3580 installs and 10–20% paying, lifetime revenue is roughly ¥170K to ¥350K (about $1100–2300). This is an estimate, and it's lower still after Google's cut.

Growth has also passed its peak. Over the nine days from 10-29 to 11-06, installs went from 3338 to 3580, a few dozen a day, and it charts in just one store, Japan. This is the tail after launch, not acceleration.

Who it's competing with

Minimal launchers are crowded, but nobody has made one that looks like an instrument:

The closest to "hardware aesthetics" is the Nothing and Teenage Engineering collaboration, but it's tied to Nothing phones. Searching English or Japanese for "music hardware style home screen" turns up only M.P.C. itself. Some people in Japan are using AI to write their own dedicated launchers (visible on Qiita and note). It's the same wave, but nobody has copied the instrument look.

Why this one: three things came together

1. An audience already there. A 300k-subscriber gadget channel, where building the product is itself a piece of content, so the launch costs nothing in acquisition. This is the main reason, and the part nobody else can take.
2. A look that's fun to film. Knobs that spin with momentum, faders that spring back, pads that glow orange: these animations look good on video. If it were just another text-only minimal home screen, there'd be nothing to film.
3. Good timing. The Galaxy Z Fold8 launched this summer, and he'd posted a Fold8 video three months earlier (168k plays). New-phone owners were looking for ways to make the big screen their own.

The instrument design made the videos fun and made fans willing to pay, but it didn't bring organic store growth: one store, Japan only, and nobody discussing it overseas.

If it were you

C has something to learn here, but copying it isn't worth much. Growth was almost entirely from the author's own audience, and the product shape brought no organic traffic. The money is small too: the Japan Personalization Top Grossing chart's bar is low enough that a few thousand installs can reach the top 15.

Who it fits: people who already have an audience (a YouTuber with tens of thousands of subscribers, a familiar face in some community) who want to build a small tool tied to their content. You don't need to copy the instrument-desktop form. Copy the method: make something people see first thing each day, and give it a strong visual metaphor you can film. Another fit: someone who just wants a beautiful personal project for their portfolio and isn't counting on it to make money.

Who it doesn't fit: people with no audience who expect Play store search to bring traffic (the "launcher" search term is topped by long-established apps with hundreds of millions of installs); people hoping a one-time ¥490 purchase becomes a business; people wanting to build for iOS (iOS doesn't allow replacing the home screen).

How to do it: pick a metaphor your audience cares about (a camera, a vinyl player, a retro calculator, a game controller all work), and build the smallest version that works and is filmable. Price it his way: free first, one-time purchase, framed as "buy me a coffee." Keep privacy clean, no ad SDKs. In Japan, given the "Nova refugee" sentiment, that's a plus.

How to get users: film the build as a video, and recruit Play closed-beta testers through it. That solves the listing gate and the first users in one move. Post again at public launch. After that, every feature users request (his night mode came this way) gets a short post once it ships. When a new phone launches (foldables, a new Pixel), talk about it in that context.

When to move: there's no hard deadline. This kind of thing follows new phone launches, and the next window is next year's foldable season. If you want to ride the Fold8 wave, you need to ship before year-end.

What would show I got it wrong: (1) M.P.C. ships an English version or charts outside Japan, and installs pass 50k within a few months. That would show the instrument form can drive traffic on its own, not just through the author, and I'd raise it to B. (2) Someone without a big account builds a similar metaphor home screen and reaches 10k installs on Play through organic traffic alone. That would show the path works without an audience. (3) The reverse: M.P.C.'s installs flatline around 4000, which would confirm it's just the afterglow of one video.

---

Data and sources: Google Play store page with daily installs, ratings, and chart positions (2026-10-29 to 11-06); X @infoNumber333 posts (8-16, 9-27); YouTube video and Shorts view counts (11-06 pages); vidIQ channel data (10-31); Samsung Japan community post (8-16); Play reviews transcribed by applion.jp; the M.P.C. privacy policy page; teradas.jp and note.com articles on "Nova refugees." Revenue is estimated from install counts; anywhere marked "estimate" or "assuming" is an estimate or inference.