One of the beautiful design features of Sailfish OS are its interactive Covers. There have been proposals in the past to allow Android covers to be interactive but while Covers for Android Apps aren’t interactive, by default they often show a screenshot of the running App. While this can be helpful it is also potentially a privacy and security risk. The screenshot can include private information that you may prefer is not visible.
My suggestion / request is that, by default, Android Covers only show the App Name with a solid colour cover so no screen information is visible.
Settings | Apps could then have an option to either allow Cover Screenshots or not (The Default being Not)
There is a patch that’s called “Pretty covers for Android-Apps” unfortunately it doesn’t work with the latest SailfishOS (3.3 at time of writing). But it pretty much does, what you want to have.
I would respect this feature as well. Not because of privacy, but because easily find the app you whant to use from the home screen. Android app screenshots are often hard to read and spesific app is hard to find. Also in my case sometimes (in SF5.2) android covers are blacks. I might have 2-3 blank covers and i need to open the app to see if it is the one i need.
Yeah its a bug? I had the feeling that when you ticked ‘‘hide view from task switcher’’ in the settings of an android app, it will then show back… I noticed that while using firefox focus for exemple. Or on some android apps that start on ‘incognito mode’
At least it could be that in some cases, the in-app settings of incognito/‘‘dont show content on task switcher’’ trigger the black card on SFOS (rightfully).
I can’t find that setting. Are you talking SFOS settings or Android settings? (I looked in both for several apps and can’t find it).
I guess; if that’s a thing.. then a better placeholder should be invented.
But when the app, against the user’s wishes, is black then that’s just broken.
Within the android app’s own settings.
For exemple in Firefox Focus, Settings>Privacy>Stealth>Hide web pages when switching apps and block taking screenshots.
I wonder if black covers happen when a user over ticked such privacy settings within an app.
Just guessing here, i may be wrong.
That setting has no effect on previews/miniatures or screenshots.
That’s arguably a missing feature - but it not working makes it seem unrelated to the bug of unwanted black covers.
I think screenshot only is suboptimal UX. lets say you have element x, signal and WA apps running. all of them show some kind of chat app screen that are similar in view. screenshots are similar and it takes effort to find the one in intrest. This is oppinion issue in some level tho.