I absolutely agree. The biggest dislike for me with /e/os is Bliss Launcher. I don’t understand why they had to re-invent the wheel. They did a piss-poor job writing a new launcher when they could have just modified Trebuchet to fit their needs.
I don’t buy their statement it was less work to write a new launcher. It may have been less work to write a crap launcher, but definitely more to write one with the expected customization.
In any case I’m also running Lawnchair, but I’m still stuck with the Bliss recents provider which also sucks (it’s a big production to change).
Using ADB I was able to disable App Lounge in lieu of Aurora Store and F-Droid. As far a I can tell, it’s fully inactive. I’m sure I can uninstall, but I generally do not like to uninstall bundled apps. They can provide components for other parts of the system that may break things if removed.
Yeah that’s rather annoying that bundled apps have a greyed out disable in the Apps settings. I don’t know if that’s something /e/os is doing or a carry-over from LineageOS. In any case I’ve been able to disable the ones I don’t want from ADB so no harm, no foul.
Another problem I have is a lot of apps have forced notifications. In other words I can’t shut them off in Notification settings. I detest spurious notifications from my phone. The only notifications I want to see are for voice and text and maybe some critical ones like system errors. Less than half of app notifications can be shut off (including system) and that just baffles me. I haven’t looked into yet, but I may be able to override that behavior with ADB. Again if I can, no harm, no foul.
To me, not having Fdroid bundled is a plus. App Lounge pulls from both Fdroid and Play Store repositories and as far as I’m aware, pulls from Fdroid when there’s duplicates. For normies (which is who /e/OS was built for) having multiple app stores is a pain.
I completely agree with not being able to easily remove default apps being an issue. But I understand why they rebadged things. Normies expect a cohesive experience, specifically those coming from Apple.
While /e/OS isn’t perfect, it’s the only custom ROM I could actually recommend to normies, and many because of these reasons. I’ll tell them to ditch the bliss launcher though. You’re right that it’s awful.
I know BlissLauncher crashed in many of the unofficial Roms for the Samsung galaxy tab, Sm-T580 making them unusable. So it seems to be a problem. Eventually found one version that worked flawlessly but don’t know why?
Apart from that what are the issues with BlissLauncher and what’s a better one & why?
I looked at Nova launcher and ms launcher but can’t see any real benefits.
The icons are at the top, where they are difficult to reach when using the phone with one hand, and they cannot be repositioned at the bottom.
It is impossible to interleave widgets and application icons on a single screen. (Most of us like to have application icons at the bottom of the screen, where they are easy to reach, and one or two widgets at the top.)
It is impossible to hide an application, so there’s no way not to see e/OS’s non-uninstallable rebadged applications.
There’s no application drawer, so one has to manually sort less-frequently used applications into folders.
what’s a better one
Trebuchet and Lawnchair are two competently-done clones of the Pixel launcher. Unfortunately, e/OS is designed so it’s impossible to install Trebuchet, so I’m using Lawnchair.
Thanks, I’m using it on a tablet so single hand operation doesn’t apply but I get the rest of the issues. Thanks for your thoughts
I haven’t looked at Lawnchair - thanks for the info.
One thing though, I’m a bit afraid of tring to replace BlissLauncher now that I have been using this fire a couple of weeks and have installed apps, etc,
Is there a way of taking a backup to restore in case it no longer works - I think this may have happened before when I tried another launcher?
Thanks, I tried but this particular unofficial Samsung tablet Rom seems to have a dependence on BlissLauncher running as when I try any other launcher, I get the message that Bliss Launcher has crashed and the system is in a retry loop which nearly stops the tablet being unable. Luckily, I somehow got back to settings and was able to change the launcher back to Bliss
I’m not complaining. Just reporting for others - it’s an unofficial ROM
I’m the OP, and I’ve now wiped my phone and installed LineageOS. It’s a pity, I was fairly enthusiastic about switching to a de-googled, European distribution of Android.
not an unhappy outcome, Lineage is great? just takes users to know what to do then. As from what you itemized in the “The Bad” list and considering your device, Calyx can be a good fit: they bundle, but do not alter and everything is optional, set at setup time.
The mods will tell us if we’re getting off-topic for this forum, right?
Calyx can be a good fit
Calyx has been recommended to me (by a different person from the one who recommended e/OS), but they only support a small number of devices, all of them recent, and recent devices are too large for my taste. (Let alone the problem of generating e-waste.)
At any rate, I’m reasonably happy with my LineageOS installation. The only trouble I had was getting the e-SIM to work. Oh, and I haven’t found a suitable replacement for Magic Earth, so I guess I’m back to webapps for public transportation.
in spirit the forum faq is very balanced. Explicit anti rom discussion rules made their way in there stemming from confrontational users. Takes only a few to ruin it for everybody, a lot of threads on general rom discussion eventually derail. Knowledge gap plays into it, but being respectful isn’t tied to competence. Anyway, I’ll treat myself to nice things despite that behaviour, ofc I can recommend another rom in good faith. At the code level (or even in funding) the opposite of siloing is going on, as there should. You really should give Calyx a try, it addresses most of your annoyances and still has the bundling-most-apps benefit.
That said, /e/OS and Lineage will likely put out builds longer for the pixel5 / redfin than Calyx, as the latter has a strict(er) policy on when they drop hardware that no longer receives vendor firmware. Then there’s increasingly a GSI for phones with Android 8/9 intro (~2017/2018) to go past a device being dropped.
Bliss launcher uses an Apple approach with no app tray and a swipe right page to show widgets. People coming from Apple may not have a problem with that, but Android people will find it odd. I’ll admit that’s a subjective thing, but /e/os is an Android system so it should adhere to Android standards. Android people want their widgets on the home page. For me it’s a big deal because I want to see weather, date, time right off. I don’t want to have to swipe to see that.
The other problem with Bliss is it lacks basic customization. It has no press and hold menu on individual icons and you can’t do much to change icon organization and layout. It also has no ability to hide icons other than disabling or removing the app. These are basic features you expect with any Android launcher.
A good Android launcher does not have these issues. Typically they have more customization than you could ask for. So again if /e/os is going to re-invent the wheel, they should have built a better mouse trap. They did not do that. Instead they built a skeletal launcher that resembles Apple and lacks basic customization. Why?!?!?!?
Yeah, maybe. But I’m an old Blackberry guy. (Ask me for my expectations on a launcher.) I for myself definitely don’t want any damned widget on my home screen. Because I always wear a watch I even delete time and date from the home screen, this is the first I do. I have a full screen calender widget (list of upcoming events) on a screen, of course I must swipe to reach it, but that’s OK, the Blackberry Hub has also been always a swipe away.
It’s never good to tell the people how they should do or see something. I hate this. People have their own lives, experiences, spleens, habits and no habit is better than another one. Some want it this way, some want it the other way, some can’t decide and want a mixture and some can’t even explain what they want (but they want something too). A sophisticated UI is able to support the user in all what he wants. Because this is indeed not easy it’s always a good approach to have a lot of options and the possibility to arrange the things so that the result will fit the individual needs. This is Bliss’ problem, not that it’s not Android enough.
There’s always the option to install a new UI / launcher for /e/ manually, but I see why people are somewhat dissatisfied with “Bliss”.
It allows absolutely no advanced configuration and even basic configuration like setting the widgets / icons where ever one wants (not all in line) is impossible.
Even the standard trebuchet allows a more extensive configuration.
I don’t think that “bliss” is unusable, but I don’t see any real advantage against the default trebuchet UI / launcher.
The “bliss” hub as well is quite limited in configuration; for notes there’s no option for an automatically refreshing overview with simple click calling them up (as a pop up), it always opens the notes application.
A bug I found out: if one ever had the notes widget set towards notes which are synced with the Murena cloud - which works in itself - and then deletes the cloud syncing, uses only local notes and replaces the notes widget for the new local notes, it will not actualize the widget notes anymore, if they are changed in the notes application.
It will always show the old version, if the widget is not removed and placed there, again (even then it will just be a stationary view, not actualizing itself).
It somewhat irritates me that it was decided to use a launcher / UI which allows even less functionality than the standard Trebuchet.
Not that “bliss” is bad, but why won’t it allow to hide application icons, why are those only able to get grouped in folders? And why can’t one organize them over 2-3 screens as individual as the user wants, they are always row on row, automatically ordered?
Yeah it’s a trivial thing to switch out the launcher so it’s mainly a case of “if you don’t like it, don’t use it.” What gets me is the principle of it. If they’re going to replace the LOS launcher (Trebuchet), at least make the replacement as good if not better.
I could use Bliss if it had some customization. If I could put widgets on the home page and disable the swipe right page where they normally appear, then I could simply put all my icons on a swipe left page. It would be a matter of swipe left versus swipe up for my app tray. I’d also want to disable the search on swipe down (normally use a widget for that). That would make Bliss work for me, not great, but usable.
or a better placed question may be productive.