{"id":793,"date":"2014-10-12T19:55:33","date_gmt":"2014-10-12T19:55:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.hovatek.com\/?p=793"},"modified":"2022-08-15T22:13:56","modified_gmt":"2022-08-15T22:13:56","slug":"how-to-fix-android-applications-disappearing-after-reboot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/how-to-fix-android-applications-disappearing-after-reboot\/","title":{"rendered":"How to fix Android apps downgraded or missing on reboot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine seeing your app drawer filled with your precious collection of Android apps and then you&#8217;re prompted to reboot after doing some modding; only for you to see an empty home screen \/ app drawer upon boot. You might also have upgraded an app only for it to auto-revert to an older version on reboot. These &#8216;Harry Houdini&#8217; apps are our focus in this tutorial.<\/p>\n<h3>Why do my apps disappear \/ get downgraded after I reboot my Android phone?<\/h3>\n<p>Lets consider two scenarios here:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>All apps go missing on reboot<\/li>\n<li>Only one app goes missing or gets downgraded on reboot<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h3>All apps go missing \/ disappear on reboot<\/h3>\n<p>Common causes on this issue are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Launcher issues<\/li>\n<li>Corrupted app(s)<\/li>\n<li>Corrupted or Unmounted SD card<\/li>\n<li>Slow or lagging Android phone<\/li>\n<li>Corrupted system or data partitions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Where did my apps go?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nowhere mostly! If you check Settings &gt; Apps &gt; All, you&#8217;ll most likely see the missing apps listed. This tells you they&#8217;re still installed, its just their shortcuts on your home screen \/ app drawer that went missing or weren&#8217;t loaded. If on the other hand they aren&#8217;t listed under Settings &gt; Apps &gt; All then you&#8217;re looking at a firmware \/ storage issue.<\/p>\n<h4>How do I fix the problem of all Android applications disappearing after reboot?<\/h4>\n<p>One or more of the following should help<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you installed a third party launcher then uninstall it and revert to the stock launcher<\/li>\n<li>Scan the SD card for errors and fix if found (see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/how-to-fix-repair-corrupt-memory-card-sd-card-or-usb-drive\/\">this guide<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/how-to-fix-an-android-phones-mass-storage-sd-card-that-wont-connect-to-pc-using-usb-cord\/\">this guide<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Avoid installing too many apps to speedup booting<\/li>\n<li>Go to Settings &gt; Storage &gt; Unmount the SD card &gt; Mount the SD card<\/li>\n<li>Re-partition the SD card if it was wrongly partitioned<\/li>\n<li>Do a factory reset<\/li>\n<li>Flash the Stock ROM<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Just one application disappearing \/ getting downgraded on reboot<\/h3>\n<p>One of my earliest experiences was with Whatsapp so I&#8217;ll use it as an example. You could find any of the following cases:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Disappearing on reboot<\/li>\n<li>Downgraded to an older version (despite updating) on reboot<\/li>\n<li>Gives a package conflict error when you try installing<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Why is my app behaving this way?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is due to remnants of the app still present either at the \/userdata or \/system level (depending on where the app was first installed to). Remnants could be as a result of partial uninstall, modification or corruption. This could cause the app to suddenly disappear (can&#8217;t launch but you might see traces of it) or still work but be difficult to uninstall .<\/p>\n<p>When you try installing a new apk, you might get a package conflict error because of the remnants still in place. If you are able to upgrade the apk then it might be reverted to the previous version (remnants) on reboot.<\/p>\n<h4>How to fix an Android app disappearing or reverting to an older version on reboot<\/h4>\n<p>The underlying principle is that you need to get rid of the remnants. If its at the userdata level then a factory reset should help. If its at the system level then you&#8217;ll need to reflash system.img from the stock rom.<\/p>\n<p>Alternatively, you could <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/forum\/thread-21427.html\">root<\/a> then delete the apk and its corresponding folders using a root browser like ES explorer. The could be in \/system\/app, \/system\/priv-app, \/system\/vendor etc).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine seeing your app drawer filled with your precious collection of Android apps and then you&#8217;re prompted to reboot after doing some modding; only for you to see an empty home screen \/ app drawer upon boot. You might also have upgraded an app only for it to auto-revert to an older version on reboot. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[818],"tags":[20,252,260,261,320,126,677],"class_list":["post-793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tutorials","tag-android","tag-android-apps-disappear","tag-app-icons-not-showing","tag-apps-icon-missing","tag-disappearing-apps","tag-tutorials","tag-whastapp-keeps-downgrading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hovatek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}