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As an unfortunate reply to myself, I'd like to ask a question to nobody in particular: Do y'all not use shortcuts? I think that they are pretty neat, and we've had them on Android since around version 7.1.

And the reason I ask this is because when I Google up different combinations of nouns, verbs and word usements for my problem of Android shortcuts and Octipi Launcher, I fairly-consistently find my own recent comments on HN (above, in these threads; within the bounds of this posting) in the top 5 results.

And that tells me that I am not only preaching to the choir, but the choir only exists of one member. And that member is me.

So I guess I am thus preaching to myself.

Awesome!

And thus, perhaps I am much more of an outlier than I ever imagined.

So the question stands: Am I really looking in from the outside with my quest for Android shortcuts that we've had for almost a decade? Is this lack of functionality really a thing that others just simply don't notice in a modern Android ecosphere? Is it a forgotten relic of the past?

(Whatever the case, it presently doesn't work with Octopi Launcher -- and I'm going to keep using it anyway.)

[BoppreH]

A bit late, but maybe you'll see this reply.

I do use shortcuts, even with Octopi. WhatsApp has shortcuts to chat with specific contacts, and Termux has shortcuts to arbitrary snippets, and I love both. I mentioned the Shazam widget only because it seemed to have the exact same functionality, only lacking the label.

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It's not the same, though.

A widget is a thing that runs. It's an active process with a channel to create its own on-screen display, and the mere existence of it consumes non-zero CPU even if never invoked.

A shortcut is more like an icon on a Windows desktop, or perhaps a unix symlink. If it is never used, then it never really does anything at all.

Anyhow, Octopi. It does support shortcuts, but it seems like there's two different pathways for them and they do not work the same at all.

One pathway: Long-press the wallpaper and there's a list of them a tap or two away for some apps and it's easy to add them to the home screen. Home Assistant is in this list, but Shazam is not.

The other pathway: Long-press an app icon and a list of named shortcuts may appear. These are impossible to link to a home screen icon. And the per-app behavior is opposite: Long-pressing Home Assistant does not present this list, while long-pressing Shazam does.