Android 14's latest work profile change means you're never truly away from work

www.androidpolice.com /android-14-pause-work-profile/

32 comments

I never understood why people are using the same phone for work and private life. Even if they call my private phone number I won’t answer (especially outside work time). And my work phone stays on my desk, so also not available after work.
- If I'm on call and out somewhere, I don't want to have to carry two phones.
  
  But when I'm on vacation or off for the weekend, I don't want to be reachable by work.
- They don't even get my actual phone number... They get a Google Voice number that is only active during work hours.
- Yeah 100% agreed. I'm not mixing work on my personal device
- Same. I use my previous personal handset as my work phone. It doesn't even have a SIM in it -- I tether my current personal phone to it when I need it for work and not at home (I work remotely).
  When I'm not at work, the WiFi on my work phone goes off.
  Little messages / quick checks for work purposes add up very quickly. They're insidious.
- My work provides me with an iPhone which I keep on me while I'm on the clock, then when I get home I tuck it in my drawer until the next morning and pull out my S21. If I get a message on my work phone while I'm off the clock i intentionally wait until I clock in the next day to respond. If it's an absolute emergency my work does know my personal number and can contact me that way but they have never done that. It's actually a very convenient system.
- My work pay's a 70 dollar stipend if you have on-call duties, which pays my bill completely. I still have AGGRESSIVE DND rules and a whitelist for the on-call number so I'm only really bothered when I want to be.
- I don't have to buy a personal phone so I just use my work phone as my only phone.
  
  FYI this is very risky for your personal privacy and security. Hope you never send a single message that you're not ok with the whole company reading!

Dammit. I really liked the absolute off Android used to provide.
Fortunately Google no longer supports my Pixel so I won't see this until I upgrade.
- Get Pixel Experience or LineageOS. It's the whole point of having a Pixel phone; you can still upgrade it after it was planned obsolescenced.
  
  Unless LOS or a different custom ROM can re-enable the "old" work profile behavior, having access to the latest version of Android might be a detriment compared to an older version that still at least receives security updates (as I assume the Pixel mentioned here does).
  I run LineageOS myself, and while I don't think this change is enough of a dealbreaker to prevent me from ever updating past LOS20 if this change isn't addressed somehow in either AOSP or LOS, it will make me less enthusiastic about immediately jumping to LOS21 the moment it's made available to my device.

It does not seem that you actually get nagged notifications while the work profile is paused.
As I understand it the apps get them but will display them when you resume your work profile.

Is this going to affect LOS/Graphene implementations?
- The author mentions doing their test in Shelter, which is what I see everyone using for work profiles, unfortunately. Not sure if it could function differently for graphene than stock.
  
  That would mean Work-Profiles are fundamentally broken.
  I hate iOS but I'm really starting to hate Android too. Is the AOSP community planning to do something about this?
  
  I believe there was a FOSS alternative to Shelter?

What a dumb change. Basically 0 benefit.

Sensational title but most people have been asking for this change. Also not sure why it's upsetting. I'm guessing the Apple bots that got purged have found a new home?
- I thought the article explained it well.
  Android 14’s work profile changes also mean you’re never truly away from work even if you pause the work profile. You’ll now definitely know when your boss or a colleague is calling you, and you’ll never show up as offline to work colleagues. Google basically replaced the previous behavior with an aggressive do-not-disturb mode, but we all know that not all jobs will respect that you’re off the clock.
  Mishaal also mentioned that this could negatively affect battery life, and also allow work apps to continue accessing your location.
  I mean beep boop beep
  
  I think you replied to the wrong comment

My work better provide me a phone if they want me to use it for work.

The whole reason I use the work profile is so I can freeze apps and not have them running in the background. I don't actually use it for "work", it's just a second profile for apps that don't need to be running in the background (which, let's be honest, is like 90% of apps).
Guess I'll be SOL in Android 14. RIP my battery life.
- I use “extreme battery saver” mode to freeze apps. Your way is/was better.

32 comments