[Shield Tablet Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Bass_92:
Shield Tablet Bug Fix "missing home button, recent tabs, notification centre" Nougat

Hello Everybody. I have a Shield Tablet running Nougat. I have been experiencing the bug described in the Title a few times, and I finally found a way to solve such bug, at least in my specific scenario. It might not work for everybody but, as I have seen a lot of Users experiencing such bug and being forced to deal with it through a factory reset, I thought posting an easy guide might be helfpful to some. It is not rocket science, but for me it does the trick well. Should you feel there is an easier way to solve the same issue, please, do not hesitate to add it to this post.

I already posted this guide on the official Shield Tablet forum, but I cannot add the link because I am a new User (c'mon dudes, I am not spamming.. just trying to help ;) ). Therefore, I am just gonna copy paste the guide. I apologise if the formatting is not ideal.

Hello Everybody, I know that there is an Android bug that has been creating issues for many years, also on shield tablets. When the bug starts, the home button disappears, it is impossible to open the "recent app" tab, the notification centre cannot be pulled down, and there are many other side effects. Since I started having this issue, I did quite a lot of research. Apparently, all I could find were information regarding how to solve the bug on Lollipop and Marshmallow, but nothing regarding Nougat. The way this bug is usually fixed is by starting the Setup Wizard on the device. Unfortunately though, I was not able to open it due to permission restrictions. Some guides mentioned installing Nova from the appstore, and setting up an action Widget in order to start the Setup Wizard. This did not work for me as well. What I was able to do, instead, was creating and setting up a new User profile, which then fixed the bug on my main User.

I am sure people more experienced and talented than me probably would have been able to find a neater way to make this happen. However, as I am quite a noob with these kind of things, I thought that writing a basic guide might be helpful for others as well.

Before going on, you should know that in my case, the only way to fix the problem is to have "debug settings" enabled on your device BEFORE the bug starts. When I first got the bug, I had not unlocked "debug settings" and I could not do it afterward, as tapping 7 times on the build number did nothing. You also need to have Android Debug Bridge (adb) installed on your computer and configured with the tablet.

Also, the process I will describing now creates a new User and switches to it by using terminal commands and Adb. I am aware that there would be an easier way to achieve the same result by going on "settings>Users" on the tablet. However, if you experience the same bug I was having, you will find out that clicking on the "Users" tab does nothing.

Here is a step by step guide of what I did:

1

Normally boot your tablet and connect it to the computer via usb cable

2

Run a command prompt windows on the computer and run Adb. Even if, due to the bug, you won’t be able to transfer files to the tablet via USB, adb should be able to interact with the shield anyway. To double check this, type the command: adb devices . You should be able to see your device listed.

3

It is now time to create a new User through the command prompt. You can do that by typing the command:

adb shell pm create-user User_Name

Once the new user has been created, the prompt will show you the respective User_ID. You will need to type such number in order to switch to that user, by typing the command:

adb shell am switch-user User_ID

eg. adb shell pm create-user Charlie

Success: created user id 11

adb shell am switch-user 11

4

Your shield should have now switched to the new user just created. At this stage, finish the new user configuration stage on the tablet. Skip all the google services related options, as you do not need them. When the configuration process is finished, the home button, the notification centre, the recent app, etc. should be back. Now that the bug is fixed, it should be possible to go back to your main User profile by simply switching User from the settings menu on the shield: settings>Users. At this stage, if everything went well, you should be logged with your main User, and the bug should have been fixed. It is now possible to go again on settings>Users and delete the new User created on step 3.

This is it. It works well for me and, even if I do not exclude that the bug will present itself again at some point, this is a 5 minutes solution to fix it. I apologise for any english mistake, as English is not by main language. Also, somebody might know of an easier way to solve the issue on Nougat, although I was not able to find any online, and that is why I wrote this short guide. I hope it will be able to help some of you!

Have a nice day!

Alberto