Android Users: Make Sure Your Phone Animation Setting is ‘On’ for the Otter to Swim in Check-In Screen

Whether you like the concept of TraceTogether or not, you’ve got to admit that the team behind the app has done a superb job.

It’s fast, it’s easy to use, it’s useful and it looks good.

With the new check-in screens, it appears that the team is also listening to our feedback. In fact, they even mentioned this in one of their TikTok videos (yes, they have a TikTok account!):

@govtechsg Thank you for your feedback! Here’s to faster check-ins with #tracetogether. Check out the new Green SafeEntry Pass ✨ #singapore #sgtiktok #techtok ♬ Easy On Me – Adele

But if you’re using an Android phone, you might face one problem: the otter on your check-in screen doesn’t seem to swim.

The whole idea of the animation is to prove that it’s not a screenshot; that one second of the staff member refreshing the screen would lead to a long queue because 10,000 seconds are 166 minutes, which is more than 2.5 hours.

Now, if your otter isn’t swimming, fret not; they’ve actually addressed that in their FAQs, but that might be buried in the wall of texts, so here’s the solution:

Android Users: Make Sure Your Animation Setting is ‘On’ for Otter to Swim in Check-In Screen

Most phones would have the default animation setting to “On”.

I’m referring to the setting for your phone, and not just an app.

If your otter isn’t moving, then you might have turned off the animation setting.

In TraceTogether FAQs, they said, “Android users, if you are unable to see the otter animation do ensure your device’s animation settings are enabled. You may navigate to it by going to ‘Settings’, tapping on the magnifying glass or search field and looking for ‘Animation’.”

For my Android phone, it’s under Settings -> Accessibility, but it’d be more useful to just search for “Animation”, because I’ve taken the liberty to try on five more phones (Goody Feed has a platform to test various phones to debug our app) and it’s always faster to do that.

But My Check-In Screen is Still Without Background!

If your check-in screen has not changed, you simply need to update your app. Don’t presume that it will auto-update, because your phone might auto-update at a later date.

The app version should be 2.11 and above.

Featured Image: kandl stock / Shutterstock.com / TraceTogether.gov.sg