Living Worlds + Android 12 + Samsung S21 = Sadness (for now)

Android 12 is rolling out, and it’s brought an unpleasant surprise for people with Samsung devices, breaking the Living Worlds live wallpaper (as well as a number of other wallpaper apps). So far 17 people with Living Worlds are affected, and I expect that number to grow. Every one of them are on Samsung Galaxy S21 phones.

Based on the crash logs, it appears to have something to do with the Samsung-specific version the new “Themed Icons” feature. As far as I’m aware, there’s no workaround for it, but if anyone discovers one, I’d love to hear about it!

A bunch of developers are trying to figure out how to fix the problem (you can follow along on this stack overflow post if you want). It may require a fix from Samsung, although it doesn’t appear to affect all live wallpapers, so clearly there’s something you can do in the code if only we can figure out what those apps are doing differently.

Stay tuned here on Medium or Twitter or Facebook and I’ll update with new information as soon as I have it!