I’m fighting with an issue surrounding my upgrade from an Android Galaxy 21 to a Galaxy S24+.
On the old phone, I have two home screen shortcuts that open dashboards in the Kiosk mode. When they open, the Chrome address bar is not visible; nor is the Sharptools 3-dot menu, lower right. These have worked perfectly for several years.
I am now trying two replicate those two shortcuts on the new phone. What I believe I have done in the past is open the dashboard in Chrome and append “?kiosk=true” to the URL. Then select the Chrome 3-dot menu and select “Add to Home Screen”.
The problem is that when the dashboard opens using the newly created home screen icon, the Chrome address bar is visible, so the ?kiosk=true is being ignored. What’s really weird is that if I click on the identical URL with the the ?kiosk=true in a Gmail message, the dashboard opens as it should without the address bar present!!
Sharptools.io is installed as an app on both phones. I can open the app and select the dashboard to open in the kiosk mode and that works as it should without the address bar as well. I just can’t get the home screen icon to behave!
One thing I noticed is that when you select “Add to Home Screen” on the new phone, you are only presented with the option to add as a URL, not as an app. I can’t remember how I did it several years ago on the old phone, but just throwing that out there.
After you append the ?kiosk=true to the URL, I presume you are pressing Enter to load the new URL and you are able to verify that the kiosk mode is working in the browser as expected before you try the Add to Homescreen approach?
Here’s the relevant help article for Kiosk Mode:
And here’s the community post for the Add to Homescreen approach:
A few things that come to mind that you might try:
From the Dashboard list, tap the ... next to the dashboard you are interested in and use the View (Kiosk Mode) option and verify the nav bar is hidden as expected
Then pull-to-refresh the page so it reloads and then try using the Add to Homescreen approach.
Thanks. I had looked through both of those but didn’t find a resolution.
If I open the browser and enter the URL with the ?kiosk=true and refresh, it doesn’t work. I can still see the address bar and confirm the ?kiosk=true is present
If I click on the IDENTICAL link with the ?kiosk=true in a Gmail message, it works as expected.
If I open the Sharptools app and select the dashboard view in the kiosk mode, it works.
If you load the View in Kiosk mode from the Sharptools app, the 3-dot menu to get to Add to Home Screen is hidden, so unless I’m missing something, there is no way to Add to Home Screen after opening in the kiosk mode through the ST app.
Per the Fullscreen vs Kiosk section of the linked article, when you use the View (Kiosk Mode) from from the ... menu from the Dashboard list, it only puts the dashboard in kiosk mode, but does not request fullscreen. So the browser’s navigation bar and menu should all still be available.
Maybe something has changed in Android or Chrome. I get the same results (no address bar) launching the dashboard in the kiosk view on both my S21 (that has the working shortcuts) and my new S24. I don’t remember if this was the case when I created the working shortcuts in 2021.
I’m not sure it’s exactly full screen when launching the kiosk mode from the ST app. When you launch in kiosk view, the Samsung navigation bar (back, etc) remains visible at the bottom. When you launch in full screen, the Samsung navigation bar disappears and you have to swipe to get it back.
I tested on a Pixel 7 running Android 14 + Chrome 126 and I was still able to access the menu button in the browser next to the URL bar in order to Add to Homescreen when using the View (Kiosk Mode) option.
I also tried on an emulator for an S24+, but I’m not sure it really emulates Samsung’s implementation as much as it does Android 14. I was scrolled down when I used the View (Kiosk Mode), but I was still able to scroll the page a bit to get the Chrome Menu to be visible where I could then use the Add to Homescreen feature.
–
You mentioned Samsung navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. It sounds like you’re using Samsung’s Internet Browser in that case rather than Chrome. As far as I’m aware, Chrome on Android doesn’t allow you to move the URL bar to the bottom – the stock Samsung Internet Browser supports that (and you can move Chrome’s URL bar on iOS, but not Android).
Perhaps it’s a limitation of the Samsung Internet Browser. Make sure to try a different browser like Chrome in case the Samsung Internet Browser is being wonky.
Or since you mentioned the navigation bar remains visible at the bottom, do you not still have access to the menu to Add to Homescreen… at least with a swipe of the page if you were partially scrolled down?
Sorry to be unclear about the browser. I am using the Chrome browser. By the Samsung bar I was referring to the phone’s navigation bar at the bottom of the page which allows you to go to the home screen, back one page and display all running apps.
