Work profiles and how they can be used as DualApps alternative on AOSP
So recently I was asked to write an article about the work profiles and how they could be used as a substitute for the “Dual Apps”. For those of you who are not quite familiar with the whole dual thing, this is a feature that was popularized by Samsung back in the day. They were famous for the ability to use two WhatsApp messengers. Some of you who owned a Samsung before know what I am talking about.
For those of you that never had a Samsung before well, it looked something like this :
Notice the second WhatsApp that has two circles in the bottom right of the icon. That’s what we were talking about.
Dual Messenger would let you send and receive messages from two different accounts on the same messaging app. Which was quite cool. It took a while until the other phones were able to emulate that behavior. To be honest, even now not every phone comes preloaded with this function. Luckily for us with the introduction of Android for Work in 2014 things got better. Slightly…
Android for Work is nothing but a collection of technologies that makes it easier for companies to adopt Android and allows their users to bring their own devices to work and more importantly run work apps on your personal phone in a totally secure, containerized work/life separation.
Meaning: for the first time your work WhatsApp account could be run on the same phone where another WhatsApp was already running and there was no risk of one account having access to the private aspect of your life.
In Android 11some of the updates have added new improvements focused on Android work profile privacy for the user especially. The enhanced version ensured that the admins could not see or track which personal apps were used by the user anymore…
With the advent of apps like Island in 2017, it has become possible for people using AOSP to emulate the same functionality on their phones as well.
Today I will talk you through the process of installing and using the app. Just a fair warning, this might be quite long, as I have quite a lot to explain.
I’m pretty sure your pretty TLDR brains are gonna hurt, but you know what? Pain is good. No pain, no gain… Anyways…
So, the first step is to open your Google Play store by clicking on this link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oasisfeng.island
Once you have downloaded and installed the app you will be greeted by the following screen. Take time to read the welcome note and make sure you understand the message.
After you click accept you will be taken through a series of screens.
If everything went well you should be able to see the next image
Adding apps to your work profile is quite easy. head over to the Mainland menu , click on it and you should be able to see all your available apps in there.
Now all you have to do is to click on the app you want to be transferred to your work profile and click on the clone button you will find in the pop-up menu towards the bottom of the screen.
Once the clone menu has been activated a new screen will pop up letting you know that the app is being cloned.
Once the cloning process has finished, head over to the “Island” menu and admire all your newly cloned apps in all their glory.
After you got tired of admiring it should you want to use them you will need to activate your launcher and go back to the phone’s main screen. There should be two new tiles present in the upper part of the screen: the “Personal” and “Work”.
Is pretty much obvious at this point but under the person you will find the original personal apps that were present on the phone
and underwork you will find the newly cloned apps you sent to the work profile.
And there you have it. If you click on the telegram or messenger you will be asked to enter your login details which will give you the ability to run two different accounts should you want it.
Enjoy,
Come back to our telegram group and say thank you to Kuber. He made me aware of the existence of the Island app and its capabilities.
