LineageOS has now gone to Android 11, and like most users, I went ahead and upgraded to it. But then I started hitting lots of problems. Predominantly on location.
Android 11 changed the way location is requested and this breaks functionality in multiple apps. Ones I have noticed this issue with:
- Just Eat
- CityMapper
- Google Maps (yes, surprisingly Google’s own app had trouble with locking on)
Other location apps may have also had the same issue, but I didn’t check those.
Waze did not have any issues locking on to location or tracking movement
Some non-location apps also broke. Fenix 2 (a Twitter client) and WeChat both stopped working and would not install off the Play Store, presumeably because of API differences.
I installed Plume instead (which I had previously purchased) and that installed and functioned happily.
WeChat I sideloaded by getting the apk from a mirror. That functioned okay, but could not log into Web WeChat
I decided to clean wipe and downgrade back to Android 10 (Lineage OS 17) to at least get things working again.
I formatted my SD card for Portable Storage, then took it to my laptop and saved the LOS flash zip, Open Gapps zip, and the latest Magisk.
I booted into TWRP Recovery and wiped, data, cache, system, ART and internal storage.
Switching to external storage, I then flashed LOS, OpenGapps, then Magisk.
I rebooted and let the OS do its thing until I got the welcome screen — that’s a good sign. I went through the setup but opted not to setup my Google Account yet.
Once through to the home page, I went and unlocked Developer options and enabled ADB, Local Terminal, Force Allow External Storage, and Force Close on Hold Back.
Then I plugged my phone into my pixelbook, allowed the debug connection and started up scrcpy which allows me to copy-paste text to and from the device.
I installed TitaniumBackup and the pro key so I can batch move apps to/from the storage.
The SD Card is still setup as Portable. So I formatted it as Internal. This took a few attempts as it kept erroring.
I went into Play Store and installed a few apps. A couple installed file, but the other errorred with a message:
"App requires external storage"
This was weird, I never saw that before, but checking around, I found this: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-requires-external-storage.4098673/ which describes fixing the storage permissions. I ran this:
adb shell
su
restorecon -FR /data/media/0
I reinstalled the apps again, and there were no errors. Fenix 2 installed happily this time, enhancing my suspicion of some API change breaking it on Android 11.
Also found out that Strava required Google Maps so I also had to install Google Maps.
WeChat finally did install, but was then told by the app that my account cannot use Web WeChat, and I should use WeChat for Windows or Mac….. and I’m running Linux, so both of those options are not feasible.
However, I did find this: https://github.com/qo6xup6/ubuntu-deepin-wechat which is a Wine wrapper around the Windows WeChat app. This seems to work well, although I did have to update the client using the instructions on the README.md
FitBit refused to pair with my Ionic (again — it always seems to have this trouble whenever I have to reinstall the app). I eventually resorted to factory resetting my Ionic, and re-setting it up again. It worked this time, although the pairing took a few attempts.
Surprisingly, I was then able to add my Curve card to FitBit Pay, and the SMS verification worked.
All in all, it took me from around 7am to 12:30 pm to reflash, reinstall, and setup all the apps again, and reboot to make sure the apps still worked. So around 5 hours.
