Sometimes (but not always) when my phone updates, any shortcuts that I have put on the home screens for individuals' phones disappear. Irritates the *!@^ out of me. I can see stuff on the net about problems with Pixel phones and deleting web site shortcuts, but not about shor cuts like mine.
Any ideas?
I have two ideas, or two shortcut methods I use, though I don't know what shortcut facility you like and expect. I've only used my solution since I moved to android.
Although you'd probably not be interested and my shortcuts may not be not as slick as what you're used to, I do have shortcuts (tiles) to selected/whichever contacts I like on my home screen with the highly customizable
Square Home launcher I use. It doesn't dial them directly, but the individual contact/picture comes up without having to search/scroll through my contacts. It brings the contact up immediately and I can click to call or text. (I also have tiles/shortcuts on my screen for selected web pages.)
Also, I use a launcher widget for my contacts app that allows me to "star" individuals in the contacts app. When I enter the contact app, pressing the star on the opening screen brings up the starred contacts/pictures only, and I then click the same way. One advantage of this method is that the stars appear alphabetically, The tiles do not, but the pictures are easy enough to spot.
I'll note that because it's the only launcher I've used to any extent, and I've never bothered to learn android, as such, I really can't say what features I have are properties of Square Home only, or more generally of android --the starring of contacts, for instance.
This also works on a backup Sony phone, on LG phones I've had, and I expect it would on any android phone I'd want. Again, probably not your cup of tea; but, that's my idea and it works and is nicely slick enough for me, I'd sure get irritated if I lost my Square Home look and functionalities. Good luck getting through this.
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