App icon on home screen

Using /e/OS
,
1

Hello,

I have a Fairphone 4 with /e/OS 3.3-a14-20251210556409-official-FP4.

When I want to open the OpenKeychain app (which, as far as my knowledge is concerned, comes bundled with /e/OS) I have to go to Settings, Apps, list all the apps, tap on OpenKeychain and then tap on something like “Open app” or similar.

Is there a way to place the OpenKeychain icon on the home screen?

I tried for a while but with no success.

Thank you

2

an app like Activity Manager | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository can place arbitrary activities on the Launcher screen. You mostly want the .MainActivity of the app, but you can also use deeper links

1 Like
3

Hi tcecyk,
thanks for your feedback.

In my initial post I forgot to mention that my tech skills are quite limited and I didn’t grasp much from your text apart from guessing that what I want to achieve might not be so trivial for me.

4

I assume you use Bliss as your launcher.

The problem is that OpenKeyChain is indeed not on one of the screens, I also don’t see it. And since Bliss has no app drawer you can also not get the icon from there.

5

Here is a video how to do it with ActivityManager.

AppManager is another option, both do the same.

6

Hi irrlicht and hi tcecyk,

Thanks for your feedback: now I have a clearer view on this issue.

1 Like
7

The easiest way for you would be to use another launcher which allows you easily to put the icons you want on a screen (wherever you want them, in folders, with gaps between and in your own order …) Most launchers do also allow to start an app which is not an icon on a screen but an entry in a list the launcher provides (the app drawer), so you can decide what you want to have on a screen and what not. Bliss is a bit special because it shows you what you see and that’s it.

Check Lawnchair 15 (from App Lounge, the app is called only “Lawnchair”, not the legacy one).

8

Hi irrlicht,
thanks again for your detailed feedback: I’ll keep it for my personal knowledge base since the info is surely really valuable for me (I had no clue of all of this before posting here).

Anyhow, unfortunately (due to my very limited tech skills), so far for the FP4 I have decided to install/uninstall/modify /e/OS as less as possible.

So, right now, I am not willing to change the launcher but surely (such as I did here) I am willing to report my feedback in case something could change in the future.

For instance: I will surely be in favour if the /e/OS launcher in the future will start natively supporting having specific icons on a screen.

Just to give a practical example: I was positively surprised by seeing that OpenKeychain comes bundled with /e/OS and I imagine that maybe for one reason or another at some point the decision was taken to have that software bundled with /e/OS so that users don’t need to do anything apart start using it; I hope the same will happen with extending the capabilities of the launcher in a direction as the one I would have hoped to be present for having specific icons on a screen.

Regards

9

Yes, sure. But keep one thing in mind: installing another launcher is nothing else than installing just another additional app. It doesn’t modify or overwrite or harm your OS or so. It’s just the app which shows and starts all the others.

If you don’t like it anymore or if you find a better one you can uninstall it again. And this will probably happen because finding the right launcher takes some time. You can also have two or three or four launchers installed side by side, of course only one can be active, but this way you can switch between them and make comparisons. The good thing is: you can do all that, no one tells you to use exactly this one and nothing else.

You can also return to the always installed Bliss when it someday shows OpenKeyChain again (I’m rather sure this is currently just a bug). Bliss will always be there and always be your fallback.