After Android 10 upgrade unremovable "Customise your Fairphone" banner on "Settings"

I have the same problem too and confirm that now it is asking me to add another email account.

These settings suggestions are always irrelevant to me too :unamused: Here is the workaround I found. (You should be comfortable using a command line probably):

  1. The package name of the Settings Suggestions is com.android.settings.intelligence

  2. Using this guide from XDA, I was able to uninstall the system app:
    How to Uninstall Carrier/OEM Bloatware Without Root Access
    Note from the guide: Even if you uninstall a system application using this method, you can still receive official OTA updates from your carrier or OEM.

  3. The result is that the suggestions are gone, but the bar for nightmode and muting etc. is still there: :tada:

3 Likes

Right, the bar is still there, but there is also a big empty space on top. And all the menus moved a bit down, so the last entry is half hidden on the bottom.

So this workaround removes the settings suggestions, but introduced a not-so-good visual appearance of the menu. Anybody else experience the same?

Yes, sadly. I finally got my repaired Fairphone 3 back this week and I’m now back on the Fairphone train :tada: I installed the latest update, reset the phone, only to find out this bug is still there (at least for me). I assume you are referring to OS version “8901.3.A.0084.20210204”? I guess I’m still not alone with this “Add another email account” hint, which is still present at the top of the settings app? :worried: I didn’t attempt to apply any workarounds yet but back then before my phone broke, I got the same visual artefacts (empty space at the top, last entry halfway hidden).

Yes, right.

I get rid of this message by deactivating the Gmail-app (there are much butter e-mail-apps, no need for the Gmail-app). Then I deleted data and cache of the settings-suggestions-app to get rid of it.
However, this has to be done again every couple of days as it reappears. So there is no workaround that removes this message fully, it still has to be fixed by Fairphone.

1 Like

@Freeker47 @ontheair

Whereas I have the ‘Customise your Fairphone’ and ‘Add Fingerprint to Unlock’ I have no ‘Add another email account’ . So do you have this as well as the mentioned two?
Never had such a problem and still not there on 0084 update

Update 1: I have got rid of the ‘Fairphone’ banner by disabling the app. Oh! it has popped up again ?? though disabled.

Update 2 with a bit of repetitive disabling and cache emptying etc. Both of the default banners gone. As I read above maybe you have a Gmail app enabled or a gmail account???

So I don’t see it as a Fairphone issue

@ontheair

That’s a great advise! I tried it and the notification is gone! No cache deleting necessary! :open_mouth: Thank you very much! Now it’s exactly how it should have been. But still, it’s only a workaround that requires a proper fix from Fairphone. And let’s wait and see if any deactivated apps pop back up.

@amoun

Initially I didn’t have them (after the Android 10 upgrade) and after a factory reset I also don’t get these. However, I remember when I was fiddling around in order to get rid of the email message - I cleared app data, etc. - at some point I started to get these notifications as well, yes. Never managed to get rid of these, though.

Yes the Fairphone banner is back :frowning:

You are welcome!

About the “Customize your Fairphone” message: It still pops up around every week. This just can be removed by clearing cache and data of the “Settings Suggestions” app. And will come back again around a week later.

Yes, right.

Looks like it may require a dedicated request for removal.

1 Like

In my opinion it makes no sense to send a support request about this issue again and again. I did this months ago - like most other users, I guess - but the answer is “We are checking, but we did not find a way yet to fix it as this is connected to a Google core feature.”

(Which is just half the truth, as all Google-related suggestion banners can be removed, just the “Customize your Fairphone”-banner is coming back again and again.)

Looks like the only thing we can do is wait and hope Fairphone will find a solution.
But if you never send a support request about this issue, then it would be a good idea - to give them a reminder that this issue is still there :wink:

1 Like

So that’s a yes or a no to send :slight_smile:

I think (and hope) they’re aware, plus the bug is “just annoying” and luckily not rending something unusable. Thus, I can understand the low priority on their end.
Meanwhile I also got the “Customize your Fairphone” notification :sweat: I’ll try to deactivate the Fairphone app tomorrow to see if and for how long this resolves it.

Maybe, once this becomes a super big pain in the ass for me as well, I’m going to decide to open a ticket as well :sweat_smile: We’ll see…

1 Like

Update: No, deactivating the Fairphone app does not remove this message. So I’m pretty much stuck with this one now :roll_eyes: Let’s wait for the next update…

1 Like

Actually I would have preferred to place my approach here, as it is the slightly more general topic and their workaround actually never came to fly on my FP3 due to the impossibility to disable the settings suggestion app graphically.
So the approach by @docksi #19 definetely has some juice, considering the banner don’t reappear ever. However both disable the search bar, and as we don’t gain any space I’d prefer to have it back.
So I want to emphasize, that the guys from XDA actually developed a solution for over a year now tbh :wink: Their data_v6.ab should already cover most cases I stumbled upon here like the GMail (details next post). To disable the “Customise your Fairphone” banner, continue:

I struggled to build a nice all in one solution by myself, but if you are more motivated and paranoid to install sth from unknown resources where there definetely is no need to, I think I found the reason which prevents it for me in the android backup extractor README

Be warned that if there are characters in filenames not supported by the operating system like :;/ etc it will not work even if it appears to do so. OSX is the most flexible in this matter.

So besides that issue, which would enable me to put anything I would like to inside the backup package, I can tackle this by $adb restore data_v6.ab (offered by XDA) and “modify” it afterwards by $make all with the attached Makefile AFTER the “Customise your Fairphone” banner reappeared:

#prerequisites:
#adb (adb server is executed as the first user starting it. So make sure it has privileges to communicate with your phone. Otherwise kill it and restart with sudo/root by $adb shell once)
#qpdf (for zlib-flate)
#regular linux stuff as sed, dd, head, ...
#
.PHONY: default
default: upload.ab Makefile

.PHONY: all
all: upload.ab Makefile
	adb restore $<

backup.ab: Makefile
	adb backup com.android.settings.intelligence -noapk
backup.tar: backup.ab Makefile
	dd if=$< skip=1 bs=24 | zlib-flate -uncompress | cat > $@
upload.tar: backup.tar Makefile
	cat $< | sed -e "s/\(_is_dismissed\" value=\"\)false/\1true/g" > $@
upload.ab: upload.tar backup.ab Makefile
	head -c +24 backup.ab > $@
	#cat $< | zlib-flate -compress >> $@
	cat $< | zlib-flate -compress | dd of=$@ bs=24 seek=1

Anyhow, you could wait for every banner to pop up and then execute my Makefile. Of course it requires your phone to be accessible via adb. In case you need to run this again, do a $touch Makefile
I fear this became way too advanced in order to make many people benefit from this workaround. Shame on Google to release such badly polished menus.

2 Likes
    <boolean name="com.android.settings/com.android.settings.Settings$NightDisplaySuggestionActivity_is_dismissed" value="true" />
    <boolean name="com.android.settings/com.android.settings.password.ScreenLockSuggestionActivity_is_dismissed" value="true" />
    <boolean name="com.android.settings/com.android.settings.wallpaper.StyleSuggestionActivity_is_dismissed" value="true" />
    <boolean name="com.google.android.gms/com.google.android.gms.trustagent.discovery.OnbodyPromotionActivity_is_dismissed" value="true" />
    <boolean name="com.android.settings/com.android.settings.wifi.calling.WifiCallingSuggestionActivity_is_dismissed" value="true" />
    <boolean name="com.google.android.gm/com.google.android.gm.setup.AccountSetupFinalGmailSuggestions_is_dismissed" value="true" />
    <boolean name="com.android.settings/com.android.settings.biometrics.fingerprint.FingerprintEnrollSuggestionActivity_is_dismissed" value="true" />
    <boolean name="com.android.emergency/com.android.emergency.edit.EditInfoSuggestion_is_dismissed" value="true" />

Banner gone with the latest update:

5 Likes

FP2 after Android 10 upgrade is affected too.

Hi probably best to a) contact support and b) start a new thread as apart from this being for FP3 it was resolved by another update.

For the FP2 please dont contact support but add to the public bug tracker, so the developer can work on the solution directly. Maybe link to this topic here as it contains hints to resolve.

2 Likes