App drawer missing in fp6 eOS

Help Fairphone 6
,
1

I have been searching internet and this forum, but I can’t find any clou why my phone is acting unexpected:

  • Swipe up doesnt do anything, nothing happens. No app drawer appears. So I can’t see the working profile created by shelter.
  • I do get a search bar when swiping down, that works, but if I have found An app this way I can’t make a shortcut on the screen. Tapping long time results in no action.
  • Tapping long on a empty spot on the screen only gives a buzz, further nothing happens. No settings appear.
  • I can’t de-activate the auto arrange of the icons on home screen, when dragged to other location it falls back.
  • Can’t find any setting clearly relating to switching on/off the app drawer.

Is this normal behaviour for /e/OS ? Am I missing some gestures ? I don’t understand why it is acting this way. The chatbot on FP website neither understands. The eOS doc reference does not give search result on the term app drawer. So I might be using wrong words. Can anybody give me some hints ?

Thanks.

2

the default launcher app on /e/ doesn’t use the app drawer. you just swipe to the side to access all your apps, like on iOS. if you want a more traditional Android experience in that regard, you’ll have to istall a third party launcher. Lawnchair is a fairly good one.

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3

Ah ok, thank you. Did not realise that. That helps understanding how it works.

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4

That is sometimes a bit tricky to manage, indeed. But you need to drag it somewhat precisely in between the app icons where you want to drop it. If you figure out the right spot, the app icons will “make room” for it. It takes some practice. :wink:

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5

Thanks, I have tried to move around an icon, it does fit between other icons, but I cant place it on an isolated location on the screen. I did find a nice feature to actually screen record that. But I see I can only upload images here, so screenshot attached! Probably it is just the way it works I guess. (Furthermore I saw that in the shelter app there is an option to add icons to the home screen.)

Screenshot from 2025-10-05 17-14-25
Screenshot from 2025-10-05 17-14-25844×1523 65 KB

6

Just wanted to see if you ever figured out how to place the apps in an isolated location! I’m hitting the same issue

7

Hello @Lark, Welcome to the Fairphone users Forum.

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To all here, as already said, BlissLauncher has its limitation.

You can modify grid size, so the number of icon per main page (from settings)
You can uninstall an app.

You can create main pages, you can create groups,
You can change order into the main page, and thanks to version 3, you can change order into the group and also have multiple pages into a group.

But it will always start populate a page from the top left to the right bottom.

If you can’t live with this iOS look Launcher, simply install another Launcher from F-droid, AuroraStore or AppLounge.
Many peoples like Lawnchair, Nova, OpenLauncher

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