Mellowdrop is the indie studio behind Niagara Launcher. We are a team of eight in Augsburg, Germany, we fund ourselves, and our whole company still fits around one big table. Here is who we are.
It started in a basement
In 2016, Peter started building a launcher as a hobby project in his parents’ basement. He simply wanted a home screen that was clean, simple, and free of clutter, and he could not find one. When he shared his experiment online, the response from the Android community made one thing obvious: a lot of people were looking for exactly the same thing.
With the project growing, Peter brought his university friend Max on board as a developer, and the two founded a small indie studio. For a while they kept working from that same basement, improving the launcher release by release. Over time, friends joined to help with design, business, and marketing, and the side project slowly became a company: Mellowdrop.
Today we are a team of eight, working full time from our own office in Augsburg. Still indie, still funded by ourselves, still improving Niagara Launcher with every update. You can meet the whole team on our about page.
Why a home screen, of all things?
The average person spends around five hours a day on their phone, and every one of those sessions starts in the same place: the home screen. It is your phone’s digital home. Yet most people settle for a cluttered default full of icons, widgets, and distractions they never chose.
That is the problem Mellowdrop exists to solve. We build Niagara Launcher to be a home screen that actually enhances your smartphone: easier to reach with one hand, quicker at finding apps, calmer to look at. And because we answer to no investors, we get to keep it 100% free of ads, even in the free version, with no data selling and no dark patterns.
Niagara Launcher today
What began in a basement now runs on a lot of phones:
- More than 13 million downloads
- Over 500,000 people using it every day
- A rating of 4.7 stars on Google Play
Numbers aside, the part we’re proudest of is how much of the launcher was shaped by its community. Many of Niagara’s best features started as suggestions on our feedback board, and we still read all of it.
Niagara is free, sets up in a minute, and switches back just as fast if it’s not for you.
Made in Augsburg
Mellowdrop is not based in Berlin or Munich. We work from Augsburg, one of Germany’s oldest cities, half an hour from Munich. It suits us: less noise, lower costs, and enough distance from the startup hype to focus on what we actually enjoy, which is making software carefully.
What’s next for Mellowdrop
Right now, Niagara Launcher is our whole focus. One product, made properly. But the ideas behind it apply to more than home screens: fewer interruptions, honest design, and technology that serves you. Someday we would like Mellowdrop to stand behind more than one product. We will not announce anything before it is ready. When something new is coming, you will read it on this blog first.
Work with us, or write about us
We are a small crew and we intend to stay one, but we do grow carefully. Current openings are on our jobs page. And if you are covering Niagara Launcher or Mellowdrop, our press kit has logos, screenshots, and wallpapers ready to use.
