[SOLVED] Shelter and bliss launcher don't get along well

I tried Shelter on /e/ and it seems to work great (although I don’t fully understand how it works*), only it doesn’t seem to agree with the bliss launcher.
Sheltered apps don’t appear on the launcher anymore and can only be launched through shelter - which makes sense, but after some time more apps that are not sheltered start to disappear and after a reboot suddenly only sheltered apps are shown.
You can then basically only launch those apps if you happen to get a notification from them.

So my tip: If you want to use shelter install a different launcher first.

Also: If you don’t want your sheltered apps to communicate with G%§$e disable device registration, cloud messaging & safetynet in the shelter’s microg settings (microg is automatically cloned to the shelter and the settings will be set to default even if you changed them before).

*Btw, does anybody know where I can find an extended guide on how shelter works? The readme e.g. doesn’t say whether sheltered apps can access eachother’s data. If so I guess one shouldn’t shelter too many apps or you’ll risk leaking lots of data again.

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Thank you for raising this problem and providing details about shelter-usage.
It would be great, if you could create a bug-report about this issue on https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/apps/BlissLauncher/issues.

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Could be related, someone reported similar problem about icons disappearing using Yalp, and re-appearing after reboot in the French category:

Shelter is using the “work profile” creating some kind of a sandbox for a subset of apps (for work) not accessing the personal data of the other ones (private). Assuming it does not do more than that (since not documented), it would mean the apps under the working profile are not isolated from each other. Anyhow good idea to use Shelter / work profile to isolate apps not privacy-compliant / trusted itill aalternatives availablefor those.

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Maybe shelter just enhances this already reported icons disappearing bug, which I also encountered once.

@patrick thanks for the explanation. By now I realized Shelter can also freeze apps so I guess the right thing to do is shelter and freeze all big brother apps and unfreeze only one at a time when using it.

it seems to be a general shelter problem because on my syberiaOS phone all shelter apps are gone after rebooting.
It has nothing to do with the launcher.

You mean the are completely gone, not just from the home screen? That’s not the same issue then.
For me they only dissappear from the home screen and with a different launcher - one that does’t automatically put all apps on the home screen - everything works fine.

one mine it’s gone from shelter. The shelter screen is complete empty. But on home screen menu the apps are available but the won’t start.
It seems that shelter has a lot of problems with some custom roms.

Is this problem solved for you guys ?
'Cause for me, Bliss Launcher never worked, I guess because of shelter.

Maybe it will be worthwhile to make a fresh install when 1.0 will be out…

I haven’t used Shelter for a long time, but now I downloaded it to test if the issue still exists and bliss launcher is completely broken all of a sudden. It just keeps stopping.
I uninstalled Shelter and everything is back to normal.

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Ok it’s exactly the same here. Thanks for your test !

I think this is a quite significant issue, because the sandboxing capability is an advantageous feature for judicious smartphone usage. By the way, it works great on my LineageOS device.

However, this is not the only case when some third-party application conflicts with android’s work profile API on which Shelter is based.

in October, after rebooting, shelter made all the icons disappear, except for a few. Now again. /e/ isn’t compatible with shelters. I hope that /e/ add a (reliable) function to clone the apps in dual sim smartphones like Xiaomi…

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Thank you for keeping an eye on this. It’s a little sad that the problem is still there. But why are you associating the cloning to work profile feature with the dual-SIM support?

because i need to user whatsapp with those people who don’t want to use other apps. Shelter works in this way and it is better because it also isolates the contacts from the main address book. Otherwise you can use Parallel Space or Whatsapp Business but in this way all contacts are exposed

I mean, Shelter (which relies on android’s work profile API) doesn’t care how many SIMs are used in your device, or whether it supports cellular at all. So, a smartphone doesn’t have to be dual-band to support Shelter. That’ s why I’m wondering why you’re putting these two things together.

Problem: i want to have 2 accounts of the same app (isn’t Telegram tha can handle 2 or more phone nr, and aren’t Signal or Phone Call app) because i have 2 phone nr. This app require phone nr for confirmation. This app sends a code via sms to verify the identity of the phone number. /e/ OS doesn’t manage app cloning (instead MIUI can do it).

(my) Solution: there is Shelter which clones the app in the work profile. I can also separate phonebook (personal and work profile, another advantage, better than simple cloning)

Is there a better and reliable different solution to apps cloning in /e/ OS?

Thank you

So is there another launcher suggested if user threat model requires to use shelter?

KISS works magically.
See issue here. Please vote it up?

Fixed here.

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“Lawnchair” is the launcher app I am using, since I faced the shelter/bliss bug. However the bug seems to be fixed :smiley: here as you already noted. will give Bliss a try again and see.