GrapheneOS
PWAs disappear after reboot
In both Brave and Vanadium, my PWAs always disappear from the homescreen after the OS reboots. I'm not sure why this happens but it's a very frustrating bug.
This happens for me too quite often, but I thought it was after the update, as that contains a reboot too. I must add, this doesn't happen consistently for me after every update.
For me it happened after the reboots from the last two updates. Normal reboots don't remove anything for me. Very annoying if you have many PWAs
Hi !
I found a way to reproduce this behavior. I am not sure we only have a single root cause for all the issues mentioned in this thread but hopefully this might help solving at least some of them.
Basically if I create a shortcut to this Etherfields app (or to this one which as far as I can tell is the same app under a different domain) in my launcher and then reboot (or close and reopen the session), all my PWAs and shortcuts are gone. It does not seem to trigger with the other apps and shortcuts I use (things like linkedin, deliveroo or GOS forum) but with the Etherfields app I have been able to reproduce it with every single attempt.
I can reproduce the issue both in main and secondary profiles It does not wipe PWAs of other profiles though. If I create the faulty app in a profile all other PWAs in this profile will disappear but other profiles won't be affected.
For reference, I run version 2024103100 of GrapheneOS (although it did also occur in the previous one) on a Pixel8 and my apps are up to date (Vanadium and webview packages are in version 130.0.6723.86.0) I only use Vanadium for my shortcuts and PWAs, I don't even have another browser installed. I do not create them from a private tab. And I use the original launcher. So this should be pretty much the standard/vanilla setup.
For the record, this report was first mentioned on the forum in this thread and another user confirmed being able to reproduce the issue even when adding the Etherfields app from Brave.
Hi, my Web Apps / PWA's have been disappearing after the 2024112700 update. I re-added them, but now they've disappeared again after the 2024120200 update. I have about a dozen installed and it's really annoying to have to find and reinstall them!
A regular reboot doesn't make them disappear. Only after a reboot for an update, since 2024112700 they disappear.
The only widget I use (Proton Calendar) doesn't disappear.
We only fixed this upstream bug for widgets so far, not shortcuts / PWAs.
We only fixed this upstream bug for widgets so far, not shortcuts / PWAs.
Thank you! I'm glad you are aware of the issue, I hope it will be fixed soon.
Update 2024120400 did not remove the only PWA I added again after the previous update. I was hesitant to add them all back. But I suppose the issue does not have to do with the amount of shortcuts / PWAs.
It likely has nothing to do with the number of shortcuts / PWAs but rather whether an edge case code path is triggered.
I just did a random restart (no call for an update) just to do so; haven't done one in a bit.
Just lost all homescreen bookmarks & PWA's. I've done many restarts like this with no update. Never have lost anything before.
I rarely use other profiles, but just 1 hour before I did the restart, I switched over to one of my other profiles, just to see what I had there. Immediately went back to Admin profile. About 60 minutes later, I decided to do a restart. Restarted fine, opened and saw all homescreen bookmarks & PWA's gone. Maybe this was the cause?
This bug didn't occur to me for a while, can anyone try again?
The bug still occurred after the last update reboot on my device
I am a new user of Graphene OS and i have just encountered this bug. Can confirm it is consistently happening for me with every reboot. I tried both stock Vanadium and Vivaldi.
This should be flagged as a critical issue. With the number of updates and reboots that happen with GrpaheneOS, it renders PWAs and shortcuts as useless. We don't want to have to keep installing all our PWAs.
You can use Chrome if you need to avoid it since it won't be impacted by this due to WebAPK support. Non-Chrome browsers based on Chromium lack WebAPK support and use shortcuts instead.
@thestinger that's not an appropriate solution when you have users like myself who do not use Chrome for privacy reasons. It is a data harvesting app and I'll never use it. Vanadium strips all that garbage out.
It would be helpful if you provided some detailed information as to how this is being dealt with and when this started. This bug was reported 10 months ago but I only have experienced it in the last month so there is some strange stuff happening.
This issue has existed for many years. It has potentially been present from the beginning of the relevant features existing. We implemented our own fix for a nearly identical issue for widgets in October 2024:
commit 6ba987b89ad14ccfd28ee59049c674145f74dd59
Author: Dmitry Muhomor <[email protected]>
Date: Tue Oct 22 20:25:38 2024 +0300
don't remove app widgets from user's home screen when the user stops
onUserStopped() method name was misleading, it's called from onUserStopping(), while the user is
still running.
Initial research was done by maade93791 <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: maade93791 <[email protected]>
https://grapheneos.org/releases#2024102400
@thestinger Thanks, that is helpful. Do you know why some users like myself are only recently experiencing this? I've been using GrapheneOS since August of 2024 with PWAs. It has only been in the last month where they disappear now after every update or restart.
@ggennrich Did you recently begin using the secondary users or end session features? We believe it's related to that as the widget issue was. We just didn't figure out where it happens for shortcuts.
I can say that it stopped happening for me a few months ago, I still have months old vanadium shortcuts in some profiles.
@thestinger Not that I'm aware of. I'm not entirely sure what those two things mean either. How can I check?
If I may add my own data point, this bug impacted me only once so far. And at that time, I was not using private space, or work profile, or a secondary user.
Do you use Private Space or a work profile?
I do not. Just to gather more data for you I tested it in Vanadium, Chrome, and Kiwi Browser. After reboot they all disappeared. I then installed Firefox and tried and it did not disappear. This leads me to believe it is a Chromium based problem with either ASOT core or GrapheneOS. Since I don't have another phone with stock Android, I can't confirm that.
For now, using FF works for me given it is private (for the most part) and secure.
It's not a Chromium issue. It's an OS issue with shortcuts.
Firefox is definitely not a secure browser on mobile where it lacks even basic content sandboxing, and it's much less secure than Chromium across platforms beyond that for multiple reasons.
Noted. Thanks for clarifying. Reinstalling PWAs on every reboot is, however, not something I'm willing to do when I have almost a dozen of them. I'll stick with FF for now since they don't disappear on reboot
I can say that it stopped happening for me a few months ago, I still have months old vanadium shortcuts in some profiles.
Update: it doesn't happen anymore in the profiles I'm mostly using, whether they're allowed to run in background or not.
Any reboot is causing all my PWAs to be removed and I have to reinstall them. I use Brave browser and I have only ever used the default account/profile.
