Android: create app icons on home page

esuhl

I have moved a lot of apps on my Android phone to the SD card. Unfortunately this means that any app shortcuts created on the "home" screen are deleted when the phone reboots.

Is there any way to keep (or recreate) the shortcuts after rebooting? Maybe there's an app that can recreate the links, or can I write a script to create new icons at boot...?

I'm running Cyanogenmod 13 (custom Android firmware), and moving apps via App2SD (which moves apps to the SD card and simlinks them to make the move transparent to the OS), but I don't think that's particularly relevant. I had the same problem when I used the native "move to SD card" with adoptable storage (where you assign some space on the SD card for moveable apps).

I don't know much about Android, but I presume this is a common issue, although I couldn't find anything when I searched...? :-/

Anyone know what I'm babbling about?! Help!

Johnmcl7

It's not an issue I've had myself as I don't have apps on my SD card but it seems a fairly well known and longterm issue:

https://www.google.com/search?q=android+desktop+shortcuts+lost+app2sd&oq=android+desktop+shortcuts+lost+app2sd&aqs=chrome..69i57.11626j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-htc-thunderbolt/71141-missing-icons-folders-apps-moved-sd.html

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/Nexus/w1-eFeZZPto

I don't know if any of these are the same cause, there's a few suggestions about trying to get the launcher view to refresh as a workaround and also some recommendations to use Nova Launcher and lock the screen (although that seems to be more for shortcuts disappearing for updates).

esuhl

Thanks... I discovered that "Trebuchet" is the Cyanogenmod app launcher (i.e. home screen).

And I found the file /data/data/com.cyanogenmod.trebuchet/databases/app_icons.db, which seems to be an SQL database containing the icons on the homepage. I opened it with a suitable viewer and can see the home screen app entries. None of the missing icons are listed, so it looks like they have been deleted rather than hidden.

I wonder if there's a way to create the appropriate database entries with a startup script...?

Hmmm... :-/