Restart as you left it

How about having the phone start with all the apps open as it was when it was powered-off / rebooted? My iPhone does that, my Ubuntu desktop does that so why not my Sailfish phone?

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It would be awesome !

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You mean the exact state of each app open or just the same apps open? The latter the takeoff app in openrepos manage handily. I have never used an iphone, so no idea what you mean with the reference. Maybe you want to provide some more details for describing the feature request in it self independently?

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I mean that the same apps are displayed on the desktop in the order in which I left them. You say that you’ve never used an iPhone. I in turn have never looked at OpenRepos. Apps should be in the Store if they’re for the phone. Even better would be if they were part of the OS system.

Thanks for the Takeoff app hint !
Not perfect, but it’s doing a part of the job.

That is basically what is happening when your phone goes to sleep. State is saved, and restored when waking up.

A powerof/powercycle/reboot should always result in the same system state, that’s what it’s for.

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@toner_cloud the app is in THE store - in openrepos - the store for sailfish os. but yeah, this should just be standard in the os, not done through an app.

@nephros no, the device should NOT be in the same state after a power off. thats what the power off is for - to reset to a defined state. this is only about the opened apps, not the whole state.

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@nephros This feature of restoring applications to thwir last-known state has been a thing dating back to Windows 98, and even before that. Upon logging in from a restart, if any programs were open upon shutdown, said programs come back to the desktop. On Android, these would be the apps in your Recents menu, and the same goes with iOS. They don’t necessarily restore the application state, but the apps last opened will be shown.

@toner_cloud OpenRepos is an alternative software repo for several Linux phone distros, especially Sailfish. I suggest you use it, as it allows you to refine the OS in ways Jolla hasn’t been able to do. You can also access applications which don’t meet Jolla’s store standards, but are still worth having. I have apps such as Peipmatz (Twitter client), Audio Output (for those times were audio is trapped on Bluetooth), Discourser and the SFOS Forum Viewer all from OpenRepos.

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You can also make a custom script to get your apps loaded on boot

1. make a script, for example

/home/nemo/.config/systemd/scripts/autostart-apps

#!/bin/sh -

invoker -n --single-instance --type=silica-qt5 /usr/bin/sailfish-weather
invoker -n --single-instance --type=silica-qt5 /usr/bin/jolla-clock
#invoker -n --single-instance --type=silica-qt5 /usr/bin/jolla-email
invoker -n --single-instance --type=silica-qt5 /usr/bin/jolla-calendar
invoker -n --single-instance --type=silica-qt5 /usr/bin/harbour-amazfish-ui
invoker -n --single-instance --type=silica-qt5 /usr/bin/harbour-ownkeepass
invoker -n --single-instance --type=silica-qt5 /usr/sbin/harbour-privoxy --no-daemon /etc/privoxy/config.sailfish
  • since the 3.40-xx update, the jolla-mail refuses to start with the invoker instance, thats why I commented it. If anybody knows a fix, shoot…

  • edit: the email app seems tot start with:
    invoker -n --single-instance --type=browser /usr/bin/jolla-email

2. make the script executable

chmod u+x /home/nemo/.config/systemd/scripts/autostart-apps

3. create a user service

/home/nemo/.config/systemd/user/autostart-apps.service

[Unit]
Description=Run applications at startup
Requires=lipstick.service
After=lipstick.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/home/nemo/.config/systemd/scripts/autostart-apps

[Install]
WantedBy=post-user-session.target

4. enable the user service

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable autostart-apps.service
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I think @toner_cloud is not asking to autostart applications, but simply to populate the home screen with the covers of the applications that were open when the device was shut down. However, the problem is that covers of applications that aren’t running are static and non-functional (so they’re rather pointless, as well as inaccurate), and functional covers would require the applications to be running, which would make device startup take quite long depending on how many applications were opened before.

Perhaps this would call for a feature request to split active covers and active applications, basically making each cover into a small ‘applet’ that can keep on running even if its parent application is shut down or hasn’t even been started yet.

I am not sure we should need to guess what the requester asks for. I already asked for more info and got nothing more in the requesters’ response.

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Well, I could be wrong, but I don’t think iOS or Android actually start any applications on boot, they just keep the ‘recently used’ list populated with screenshots of the latest state.

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@ljo I thought I’d already specified what I wanted in the initial posting. I want the phone to start up with the same apps present on the desktop. If that means they are active then that’s what I want. I like the idea of the script suggested above by flipper and may well have a crack at implementing that at some point. If it works to my satisfaction then that would be adequate until it is implemented in the OS. I say adequate as IMHO, anything that has to be done manually is not going to be as good as something done automatically by the in-place software.

@flipper I’ve tried your script and can make 10 out of my normal 12 apps start after a reboot - email is one of the 2 that don’t as you have already mentioned. Do you have an idea on how to make the Phone app start? I.e. where’s the binary for it, or if it’s in /usr/bin, what’s it called as I can’t find a likely candidate?

Answering my own question!

The binary for the phone app is /usr/bin/voicecall-ui. I’ve added that to the script and while it launches successfully, it’s not first in the phone as it should be but I guess that’s down to the speed at which it completes loading as the messages app always seems to start first. That’s a minor annoyance though.

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the email app seems to start with:

invoker -n --single-instance --type=browser /usr/bin/jolla-email

@flipper Many thanks for that.