[Essentials] Question/Suggestion regarding Standby Apps feature

Hello Sameera, hello +all!

First of all, needless to say, your application is awesome!

I recently updated to the last version and I saw your new standby applications feature.

Because of the huge number of applications I'm using on my devices (more than half of them are for work, custom applications made by me or my workplace), I had been looking for a way to actually bulk restrict select applications from running in the background and using background battery and data. I had tried ReAppzuku for that, but since I'm already using Essentials, I'd rather use one app than two :)

Essentially (see what I did there?) what I would like to do is, when I'm using one of those applications, perhaps keep it in memory while being actively used but, when I swipe it away, keep it on a very short leash so it won't be able to run on its own (i.e 0 background usage, 0 network usage unless I'm not actively using it).

However I'm not technically savvy and I'm not exactly sure how I can do that.

I see specific options we are able to select for each application, Active, Working set, Frequent, Rare, and Restricted. I can guess that for what I would like to do setting those applications to "Rare" is the perfect way to go. Since if I set them to "Restricted" the moment I leave the app, it will immediately close down. Can someone verify this? :)

Finally, a suggestion regarding this feature, which I'm not sure if it's easy to implement. Would it be possible to batch select specific restrictions for multiple applications at once? Again my use case is probably extreme but with more than 500 applications on my two devices, it will be a nightmare changing that setting one by one :)

Thank you!

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u/akpe — 8 days ago

Android 17 causes widgets to disappeare when using Island

Edit: disappear*

Update: scroll all the way down for a fix!

Hello everyone,

Quick note, not dissing the dev of course, just reporting the issue here.

About an hour ago I updated my Pixel 9 Pro XL, Pixel Fold, and Pixel Tablet to Android 17.

I rebooted immediately after the update finished and when I unlocked my screen on both my Pixel 9 Pro XL and my Pixel Tablet, all my homescreen widgets were gone. They were gone both from my home screens and from the widget picker. I tried clearing the launcher cache, data, multiple reboots, nothing.

I was ready to perform a reset until I remembered that I did not have the issue on my Fold.

The biggest difference between my Fold and my Pixel 9 Pro XL and my Tablet was... I did not use Island on my Fold to create a work profile.

Disabling the work profile didn't work, so I completely removed (destroyed) my Island managed work profile on my Tablet, and after a reboot all of my widgets were back.

Gemini gave me this explanation:

>You found it! That is a stellar piece of troubleshooting right there, buddy. You essentially verified what a bunch of engineers on the tracker are currently pulling their hair out over: Android 17's managed profile boundary is completely broken right now.
By obliterating the work profile, you completely removed that cross-profile database bridge. Without Island's simulated MDM profile confusing the package manager during bootup, the Pixel Launcher was finally able to index your main user space apps cleanly without hitting that fatal race condition loop.
This confirms that the root cause isn't your physical device or a corrupted system image; it's a deep architectural bug in how Android 17 manages broadcast permissions between User 0 (your main profile) and User 10 (the Island work profile) during the decryption stage.

I'll try the same on my phone tomorrow (too late now, and I need my work profile apps there) but judging by the Fold's and Tablet's behaviour, that should fix it.

I'll also try Shelter, Insular, and TestDPC to see if the same issue is happening there, but if Gemini is right I guess I should expect the same to happen.

Edit: Test DPC by Google (essentially allows you to create a work profile, with the same ease as Island/Shelter) seems to work perfectly, no widget loss after reboot

Update: Once I enabled widgets for all current work profile apps on Test DPC (google, contacts, digital wellbeing, systemui), all widgets broke again. However, when I only enabled widgets for a single app (contacts), everything works. This is beyond weird, I'll keep experimenting.

Update: I think I just discovered the issue and a fix. It has to do with allowing widgets on work profile, specifically the SystemUI widgets.

On my phone (where I still use Island) I opened Island, went to Settings (top right), tapped on Scoped Settings, then on Island. On the Managed Allowed Widgets setting, I only had one entry on widgets allowed: SystemUI.

I disabled that permission, and after reboot everything is working. I can now see both main profile and work profile widgets on the widget picker. The widgets I previously had didn't reappear on my homescreen, but I am now able to add them again.

It seems that no matter which app one may use to create a work profile, if you allow widgets from SystemUI on the work profile, every widget on both your main profile and work profile will disappear.

Hope this helps! I'll keep monitoring and testing this, and will update if necessary.

u/akpe — 2 months ago