Beginning to get incredibly frustrated with the lack of live wallpaper support

Teracube 2e
#1

I’ve posted about this a few times before. It’s been confirmed that live wallpapers cannot be used in android 13 either, although they were functional in 12 before development on that was stopped. They also worked in the first version of 11, but support was lost in subsequent updates. I wouldn’t have updated if I had known this beforehand. I have my phone rooted, which took a long time and was very frustrating, so it isn’t worth the trouble to reset and go back to the old update.

I understand that this type of thing is not the priority in development… But it does make the phone a lot less enjoyable to use. I would really appreciate if the team could look into why the live wallpaper picker is not only missing from the phone, but also doesn’t function if you install it yourself. I’ve tried. It just crashes.

It’s reaching the point where I’m looking into finding a different phone. I don’t want to give up repairability, but the inability to truly customize my phone is driving me up the wall.

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#2

I am sorry to hear that this has been so frustrating for you, but I understand how an important aspect of customization, or truly making the device your own (which aligns with our drive towards open devices and repairability) being missing can be a big loss.

I don’t have any visibility into why this feature has been removed from the ROMs at the moment, but I will upstream your post again to make sure it is on the developer’s list.

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#3

Of note, it should only take 15 minutes or less to successfully root your phone, after you’ve done the prep work once. Current process, from scratch:

  1. Download the update file for your current build, if you don’t have it already.
  2. Extract the boot.img from it
  3. Copy that to your phone
  4. Install Magisk - I prefer Canary but that’s because I like being able to pass Certification and still use an official branch
  5. Open Magisk and patch the boot.img you copied over - do not try to patch vb or anything else
  6. Copy your patched Magisk file back to your computer
  7. Enable Developer options on phone
  8. Validate you unlocked the bootloader - if you’ve previously rooted that device, it’s unlocked, but make sure so you don’t end up needing to spflash
  9. Enable adb
  10. Using platform tools on your computer, adb reboot bootloader
  11. Using platform tools on your computer, fastboot flash boot magisk-patched-boot.img
  12. Using platform tools on your computer, fastboot reboot
  13. After your phone boots back up, validate that Magisk is installed and fully functional

After you’ve done it once or twice, if you have the update zip and the platform tools already on your device, the whole process on a freshly wiped phone that’s booted up can be done in about 5 minutes, and that’s counting the 30-90 second boot time after flashing the Magisk-patched boot file.

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Need help installing magisk- The official tutorial just doesn't seem to be working
#4

Regarding Live Wallpaper, it worked on 11.0.0 through 11.0.3, and only failed again when they rebased 11.0.4 on the 10 branch. I believe it’s been confirmed working on 13, though some specific wallpaper apps have been abandoned by the developers and are no longer able to function on current Android. This is a failing of those app developers, not of Teracube, and would be the case for any updated phone using Android 13 or 14.

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#5

Is there a specific live wallpaper that works on other Android 13 phones but does not work on our Android 13 build? And example would be good for the Devs to test.

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#6

Maybe I misunderstood in the discussion thread of the update to 13, but I thought a dev said the live wallpaper picker was also missing in 13.

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#7

My understanding of what was said is that while Forest Live Wallpaper is built for ICS (Android 4.0) and no longer supported by Google on any updated phone, Living Worlds which is built for KK (Android 4.4) and XScreenSaver which is built for JB (Android 4.3) are both functional in the Teracube 2e Zirconia Android 13.0.0 Beta 1 build.

2 Likes
#8

That’s good to hear. Going back and rereading that reply again, I see that I definitely misread it- That’s on me :grimacing:

I guess I’ll just have to find a new live wallpaper to use, in that case. Better than not having them at all.

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#9

In terms of a live wallpaper weather app with many possible layouts, I’ve been a fan of YoWindow Weather Unlimited though they also have a free ad-supported version of the app. It seems to go on sale at 40% or more off every few weeks if you prefer to avoid the ads though. They’ve kept it updated, however, and both versions are currently built for Lollipop (Android 5.0) with a recent change note about enabling Android 12 features.

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#10

For whatever it’s worth- I had Forest Live installed before I upgraded to Android13 beta2. It still works after the upgrade but Google Play is pretty clear the app “isn’t compatible with my phone anymore.”

If I do a factory reset or for some reason lose the app, I won’t be able to re-install it but working for now.

-PlantP

2 Likes
#11

Sounds like the suggestion is to use a program to save your APK and back that up off-phone, whether in the cloud or on a PC. If the wallpaper still works and it’s simply that Google doesn’t allow installing it from the Play Store due to their rules, you can probably manually install it if you have the installation APK.

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#12

At least in the case of the Forest Live Wallpaper, sideload after being on 13 does not work:

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#13

Seems the bug is due to some kind of missing component, considering what’s been said in the latest beta thread… Why does this component go missing as each new version of android is worked on? Is there some kind of reason the live wallpaper activity keeps being dropped?

I’m not sure how this stuff works. I don’t understand what could possibly cause something so specific to accidentally be removed as other components are added.

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#14

Based on my having a different result, it’s possible that upgrading from 11.0.4 (without functional live wallpaper support) led to 12.0.1 (which should have it) not working. If that’s the case, then there might be a system component where wiping the data will fix the issue. It’s also possible that the modules I’ve applied to my rooted system have caused the issue, despite not having the wallpaper issues with 11.0.0-11.0.3.
When I’m able to upgrade my wife’s phone, which has stayed on 11.0.3, we can see if it has the same issues or if it ends up happier with live wallpaper.

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#15

We have found the issue - will be fixed in the next Android 13 release (after Beta2)

4 Likes
#16

Fantastic news!

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