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I have a Nexus S running 4.1.1 and a Nexus 7 running 4.2.1 and they both have the same problem with Beautiful Widgets. Whenever I reboot either device, the widgets no longer show up on the home screen or lock screen (for the tablet).

When I open the Beautiful Widgets config app, I can see that they're still tracking the widgets I added but I'm unable to get them to show up on my home screen again unless I add a new one and reconfigure it. Is this a problem with the latest versions of Android or is this a Beautiful Widgets problem?

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2 Answers

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Make sure the app is on internal memory, not the SD card. I know that Android does not support widgets for apps that have been installed to the SD card instead of internal memory (at least for android 3 and below; not sure if it has changed for android 4).

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Quite true. The technical reason behind this: the SD card is mounted only when the boot_completed broadcast already has been sent. So nothing installed on SD card receives the boot_completed event. Apps installed on SD thus cannot "autmatically start on boot", widgets not automatically load. And they would break as soon as the card is connected to a PC via USB, of course... – Izzy Jan 25 at 15:45
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Beautiful Widgets doesn't support installation to the SD card so it has to be on internal memory. i.imgur.com/Ms4mPdd.png – MCeley Jan 25 at 15:55
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The problem is caused by a bug in Jelly Bean that causes apps installed via Google Play to be installed to the external storage regardless of the "internalOnly" qualifier in the application manifest. Source: Android Bug Tracker 1 and 2

The issue of widgets disappearing can be resolved with a work around using Titanium Backup. You install Beautiful Widgets through the store, back up and uninstall Beautiful Widgets using Titanium Backup, then reinstall Beautiful Widgets to internal storage via the backup. I believe Titanium Backup requires root access so I won't be using this solution on my personal phone but I have tested with a rooted dev tablet and it works.

The issue has been marked as fixed for the next Android release so aside from rooting my device, waiting for an update is the only solution.

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