Home screen shortcuts are erased after reboot or update

[barbeau]

Summary:

Reported by user with Samsung Galaxy S6:

Widgets all disappear whenever the phone is booted. This is 100% reproducible. The problem occurs with both ways of creating the widgets (long pressing on Starred Stop, or long pressing on Home screen). I mostly use the Stop widget, but I've also tried Route, Recent Routes, Recent Stops, and Starred Stops and all disappear on a reboot. Only the OneBus widgets disappear, other apps widgets are OK. There are no problems with adding them.

Steps to reproduce:

On certain Samsung devices:

1. Star a stop
2. Go to "Starred Stops" view, long press on a stop, and choose "Create a shortcut on home screen"
3. Return to home screen and verify shortcut is there
4. Reboot phone

Expected behavior:

Shortcut should still exist after rebooting the device

Observed behavior:

Shortcut disappears after reboot

Device and Android version:

App Version: 2.1.4
Model: SM-G920V
OS Version: 6.0.1 / 23
Google Play Services App: 10.0.84 (440-137749526)
Google Play Services Library: 9452000
Region/API: Puget Sound (selected automatically)
Loc: network , 27 second(s) ago

[barbeau]

I'm not sure if there is anything we can do about this, but the user did say that the below open-source apps don't have the same problem (i.e., the shortcuts survive a reboot). So, we could try to look at these and figure out what the difference is between these and OBA:

Forecastie https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.casticalabs.forecastie

Ministocks https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nitezh.ministock

Mirakel https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.azapps.mirakelandroid

[barbeau]

I'm guessing that this was a device-specific bug, so I'm going to close this to clean up issues. If anyone is still experiencing this please let me know.

[barbeau]

A user is reporting something similar on a Pixel 4 XL, so I'm re-opening:

With the latest Android security update from Oct 1, 2021, I noticed that the Starred Stops widget had disappeared from the display, so I went to add it back, but if I select Add Automatically, the display gets stuck like in the attached screenshot and I have to turn the display off and on again to clear it. If I try to manually place the widget, it briefly shows up and then disappears.

App Version: 2.8.0 Model: Pixel 4 XL OS Version: 11 / 30 Google Play Services App: 21.36.14 (150400-395708125) Google Play Services Library: 12451000 Region/API: Puget Sound (selected automatically)

[chrispmccabe]

I updated to version 2.9.3 and it mostly fixes the problem. I am able to add and manually place the widget and it survives a reboot, but if I select Add Automatically, the display appears like it's going to do something (see the screenshot above), but nothing is added until I turn off and on the display and then it does add it.