Notification Bar, Home, Recent buttons disappear occasionally since Android 12

[drb01]

Since upgrading my Samsung S10e OTA, the Home and Recent App buttons disappear, and also I can't swipe the Notification pane down. The only fix seems to be a restart. The problem happens reliably after charging for a while, and occasionally during normal use as well.


I have tried wiping the cache and pretty much every other setting I can think of. Any idea how to fix this so that I at least don't have to reboot!?

 

[drb01]

any ideas anyone?

 

[schwinn8]

I am wondering if your launcher/home app is crashing? I think that even if you use a third-party launcher (eg, I use Nova) these buttons are still handled by Samsung's launcher/home app? If that is sleeping or crashing, it may be why these are disappearing? That would be my only guess at the moment.

On older phones, when this kind of thing happened, I would put a launcher icon on the screen, so I could relaunch it. But I don't see an icon available for the OneUIHome app on my phone... but if you can find some way to get that it may allow you to restart it, and test this theory?

 

[drb01]

I am wondering if your launcher/home app is crashing? I think that even if you use a third-party launcher (eg, I use Nova) these buttons are still handled by Samsung's launcher/home app? If that is sleeping or crashing, it may be why these are disappearing? That would be my only guess at the moment.

On older phones, when this kind of thing happened, I would put a launcher icon on the screen, so I could relaunch it. But I don't see an icon available for the OneUIHome app on my phone... but if you can find some way to get that it may allow you to restart it, and test this theory?

I am not using a 3rd party launcher. However I have tried using Nova (free) and it seems to have the same problem.

I have also installed Assistive Touch that puts a little floating button on the top that acts as home/last used/notification panel. Only the Home function works however so I still can't access the notification panel.

I really don't want to do a factory reset! Maybe the next update will fix it but this phone is quite old now so I don't know how many updates are yet to come....

 

[schwinn8]

Sorry, I don't have any other ideas. I have heard of people having issues with A12 in general, but not this one particularly. That said, if you do a FDR then you may consider going back to A11 and seeing if that resolves it. The FDR might do it as well, but you can't go back to A11 from A12, so you could do that and see how it fares... then do the A12 update (without FDR) and see if it comes back - in which case you'd know it's something to do with A12 on your phone...?

Sorry I don't have better ideas!

 

[drb01]

Thanks - do you know if there are any large updates in the pipeline after the update to A12? I ask since I had this problem when I first bought the phone and I think it went with the next large update. Back then (2 years ago or more) I could fix the problem without restarting by clearing the cache in Android settings which somehow got the buttons & notification pane back. Unfort there isn't an option to clear the cache in A12 (I have tried doing it in recovery which made no difference).

 

[schwinn8]

That's weird... I don't believe we can expect A13... so the only thing I'd expect is continued security updates...

I have avoided A12 because of the many issues I read about on the forums and elsewhere. I have no issues with the phone today, so I figure why bother, you know?

 

[kayuz]

I've actually never encountered this behaviour, strange. Mine have a bright line on the bottom part of the screen and sometimes it shines more then other. But that's purely hw issue not software.
Regarding updates, Samsung is updating now with May 22 security patches, I heard they moved us to 3months cycle of updates, but seems they still comes out monthly. That's cool!

 

[drb01]

I've actually never encountered this behaviour, strange. Mine have a bright line on the bottom part of the screen and sometimes it shines more then other. But that's purely hw issue not software.
Regarding updates, Samsung is updating now with May 22 security patches, I heard they moved us to 3months cycle of updates, but seems they still comes out monthly. That's cool!

There are one or quite old posts about the same problem, and the suggested fix is to enter the following in ADB

adb shell am start -n com.google.android.setupwizard/.SetupWizardTestActivity

But on my S10e there is no SetupWizardTestActivity option available when I go into ADB.

Any idea?

 

[drb01]

There are one or quite old posts about the same problem, and the suggested fix is to enter the following in ADB

adb shell am start -n com.google.android.setupwizard/.SetupWizardTestActivity

But on my S10e there is no SetupWizardTestActivity option available when I go into ADB.

Any idea?

Any ideas anyone? The problem seems if anything worse since the last OTA update from Samsung !

 

[schwinn8]

Have you tried a different launcher app? Is the OneUI app being killed by something? I would think it should be eliminated from battery optimization in the stock ROM by default, but make sure it is. Beyond that, if you're using any battery-saving apps that could be killing it?

 

[drb01]

Have you tried a different launcher app? Is the OneUI app being killed by something? I would think it should be eliminated from battery optimization in the stock ROM by default, but make sure it is. Beyond that, if you're using any battery-saving apps that could be killing it?

The OneUI Home app was "Optmised". I changed it to Unrestricted which made no difference.
In a previous version of Android when I had this same problem I could just clear the app cache in Settings and the buttons would reappear. There doesn't seem to be a way to do this in Android 12. I have tried wiping cache in recovery which made no difference.

 

[schwinn8]

Do you have other battery optimization apps installed? Greenify, etc? These may be killing it as well.

You can still wipe cache in Android 12: https://mobileinternist.com/clear-cache-android

If you had a workaround in A11, I might suggest going back to that - you should be able to (for a while, at least... once the BL changes you won't be able to).

 

[drb01]

Do you have other battery optimization apps installed? Greenify, etc? These may be killing it as well.

You can still wipe cache in Android 12: https://mobileinternist.com/clear-cache-android

If you had a workaround in A11, I might suggest going back to that - you should be able to (for a while, at least... once the BL changes you won't be able to).

V happy to go back to a11, but Is there a way to go back to a11 without doing a factory reset?
And excuse my ignorance but what is BL?

 

[schwinn8]

No, you can't go backwards without resetting.

BL = Bootloader. Samsung has been updating this and if you're on a later version, you cannot backtrack it (at least not on a Snapdragon phone). I realize now that I'm not sure which phone you have, so if you're on Exynos then the situation could be different.

As long as the A11 you're flashing has the same BL version as the one you have now, you can flash backwards that way. 5th digit from the end of the version number (eg G970U1UEU6IVD2) tells you the BL version. You'll need to get an A11 with the same version there, and it should be doable.

What's your full version number?

 

[drb01]

No, you can't go backwards without resetting.

BL = Bootloader. Samsung has been updating this and if you're on a later version, you cannot backtrack it (at least not on a Snapdragon phone). I realize now that I'm not sure which phone you have, so if you're on Exynos then the situation could be different.

As long as the A11 you're flashing has the same BL version as the one you have now, you can flash backwards that way. 5th digit from the end of the version number (eg G970U1UEU6IVD2) tells you the BL version. You'll need to get an A11 with the same version there, and it should be doable.

What's your full version number?

The full build version is SP1A.210812.016.G970FXXUFHVE1.

If there is a way to go back to a11 without doing a reset I'd love to know! Or of course just any way to fix this problem ..

 

[schwinn8]

Sorry, I should have chased this down first - you have an Exynos phone, so you may have other options. You'll need to re-post and say you have an Exynos phone, and ask people about this again... maybe others who are more familiar with Exynos can chime in. Sorry for wasting your time with my Snapdragon-related info.

In the future, it's important to mention you have an Exynos phone... or say you have a G970F... the "F" means the same thing.