Frequently Asked Questions
Compare with Island and Shelter
| Island | Shelter | Insular (based on Island) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isolated profile to install Big Brother apps | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| No proprietary code/components (GMS, Crashlytics, etc) | No | Yes | Yes |
| No Internet access | No | Yes | Yes |
| Good internationalization | No | Yes | No |
| Option to prohibit ADB access | Yes | No | Yes |
| Auto freeze | Yes (with proprietary Greenify) | Yes | No |
| Freeze main space apps | Yes | No | Yes |
| Block Contacts Searching | No | Yes | No |
| Image Chooser as Fake Camera | Yes, with SAF Enhancer Lite | Yes | Yes, with SAF Enhancer Lite |
| License | Apache License 2.0 | GNU General Public License v3.0 | Apache License 2.0 |
All features of Island are preserved in Insular and will be synced upon [upstream] updates
Is Insular compatible with my device?
If you are facing setup failure, malfunction with apps in Insular or any other issues and wondering whether Insular is compatible with your device / ROM, please try TestDPC，the official “Android for Work” test tool from Google.
If TestDPC also does not work properly on your device, there’s a high chance that your device / ROM is incompatible with “Android for Work”, please contact your device vendor or ROM maintainer, mentioning the TestDPC not working issue.
If TestDPC works flawlessly but Insular does not, please file an issue with logcat attached for us to further analyze. If you are not familiar with logcat, please “Take bug report” in system “Settings - (System) - Developer options” and share the bug-report privately.
Error in setup: “Oops! Couldn’t set up your work profile. Contact your IT department or try again later.”
If your device has “Dual Apps”, “App Twin” or similar feature, it may be implemented by the same “Android for Work” infrastructure as Insular. This leads to a conflict, thus you can not use both Insular and these features.
Otherwise, your device is probably incompatible with Android for Work. At present, you can only setup Insular manually.
Error in setup: “Custom OS installed” (Samsung-specific)
Samsung enforces extra limitation beyond stock Android, forbidding work profile to be created with custom recovery installed. You can either temporarily revert back to stock recovery and flash custom recovery again after setup, or setup Insular manually.
Failed to clone app with error message:
"Insular cannot clone apps without a proper built-in app market on your device (preferable Google Play Store)"
This is a special requirement only on Android 5.0 devices. In most cases, your device will ship with an app store (e.g. Google Play Store) out of box.
If you received this error message, please consider upgrading your device to Android 5.1+, or switching to another ROM variant with app store built-in.
Solution for advanced user: execute the following ADB command on USB-connected computer:
adb -d shell settings --user 10 put secure install_non_market_apps 1
Replace “10” above with the actual user id of Insular space on your device. (use adb -d shell pm list users to query)
Why is my (Google) cloud backup disabled in God mode?
Due to immature internal restrictions in Android system, backup service may be disabled on older version of Android in God mode. Unfortunately, this cannot be changed unless upgrading your system to Android 8+.
- For Android 5-6, backup is always disabled when God mode is activated.
- For Android 7.x, backup is disabled if God mod is activated and secondary user (including Insular space) is created.
- For Android 8.x, backup is always available.