Disabled AI features suggested in widget creation prompt as enabled | Incorrect widget size on home screen

[Ricky-Tigg]

Describe the bug

Hello

• In settings entirely disabled AI features cannot be interpreted as disabled since mentions elsewhere suggest that there must be an AI feature enabled.

Presences of the AI symbol in search bar and explicit mention Duck.ai.

• The size of the widget created on home screen is not the one that is indicated at the time of the addition of the widget. Instead of 4 x 1, the size is likely to be at least 8 x 1 .

Size of the widget on home screen

How to Reproduce

Settings:

• AI features ==> Duck.ai | disabled
• Home screen widget | click Add

Expected behavior

• Entirely disabled AI features to be as such, thus with no presence of element suggesting elsewhere in aprompt and UI that they must stilll be enabled.
• Size of widget indicated at the time of the widget addition to be the one on home screen.

Environment

- DDG application v.: 5.253.1
- Device: Huawei Mediapad T5
- OS: Android, v. 8.0.0, emui v. 8.0.0

[github-actions[bot]]

Thank you for opening an Issue in our Repository. The issue has been forwarded to the team and we'll follow up as soon as we have time to investigate. As stated in our Contribution Guidelines, requests for feedback should be addressed via the Feedback section in the Android app.

[cmonfortep]

@Ricky-Tigg thanks for reaching us.

In the widget picker, we display preview images for the available widgets as guidance, but after adding the widget, the final UI will reflect your app configuration and values (i.e with Duck.ai enabled or disabled). I agree that was not clear on your screenshot, however on newer versions of Android, we are able to show a hint where we can explain that part better. Sharing with you an screenshot from my device:

About the size, I've tried to repro this on my side (testing on different android versions) and system calculates size correctly and widget follows that. I see you are using emui v8, I was not able to test that one, so maybe related. While not ideal, you should be able to resize the widget after adding it to your home screen. Can you confirm if that works on your device? Thanks!

[Ricky-Tigg]

Size of displayed widget on screen can indeed be adjusted.

Testing on

• device: Nokia 8 TA-1004
• OS: Android v. 9

reveals inconsistent behaviors.

• prompt shown at the very first application launch since its installation.

Clicking Add automatically invariably fails adding widget, while triggering the exhibition of a prompt with

• prompt shown at next launches

Adding that one fails as well with same prompt as above mentioned.

[cmonfortep]

That's a separate issue. The QuickStep process belongs to the system and indicates it crashes when adding the widget. I've just tested this on an emulator running Android v9 and didn't crash for me.

We are just fixing a related crash in https://github.com/duckduckgo/Android/pull/7022 for a small number of devices where we fail to communicate with system for adding widgets or checking if they are present. That can improve the behavior on your device.

Related question, your initial report was from a different device (Huawei Mediapad T5 running on android 8). Latest comment is on Nokia 8 TA-1004 running android 9.

I assume you can add widgets on the huawei, can you add widgets on the nokia? I understand it fails from our prompts, but could you check if adding manually the widget works or does it also fail?

Thanks.

[Ricky-Tigg]

That's correct. I can add it automatically to the original device, but not to the last one tested, not even after restarting the device. However, I can add it manually regardless of the device.

[cmonfortep]

That's correct. I can add it automatically to the original device, but not to the last one tested, not even after restarting the device. However, I can add it manually regardless of the device.

I don't have a good answer to that, since we use the apis that the system offers and that's unexpected. My expectation is that once we release the fix, it would not crash to you. However, we won't solve adding the widget from the app, which should work according to the official docs.

At least to confirm the crash is gone, would be really helpful for us if you could test this on your side once the new version is available (5.255.0). It should reach Play store during next week.

[Ricky-Tigg]

Rereading your last message makes me notice that Duck* does not crash when "Quickstep keeps stopping" appears on the screen; thus the window for Duck* remains exhibited.

---

v. 5.255.0 | On Nokia 8 TA-1004; OS: Android v. 9

Still getting "Quickstep keeps stopping". Quickstep v. 9.0040.08, storage cleared.