If you have been trying to use the “Add to Homescreen” function this morning, you have found there is something wrong going on. It is not working! But don’t worry, Google has gone on the record about this issue and informed us that they have pulled the feature to work on a bug for a while.
What is Add to Homescreen?
If you haven’t heard of it, “Add to Homescreen” allows you to create shortcuts in your smartphone’s homescreen, straight from Chrome Beta for Android. It’s a very helpful feature introduced last month. You can read all about it in our announcement post.
Why is it being pulled?
Google announced it’s pulling the feature to fix a bug that was reported in the Chromium Code site. It seems the “Add to Homescreen” links have been failing when launched from the homescreen. Users are getting blank pages and screen freezes, which is definitely something to worry about.
The issue can be reproduced by doing the following:
- 1. Add an application to the home screen using the “add to home screen feature”
2. Click on the application from the home screen
3. Application opens up and, at times, crashes (blank pages, screen freezes) on random pages.
When will we get the feature back?
Google hasn’t specified when “Add to Homescreen” will be back, but we assume it won’t be long. They do say it will be “very soon”, but that could mean anything. Just hold on tight! After all, this is Chrome Beta for Android. We kind of sign up for bugs and issues when we sign up to be beta testers!
