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Anyone experiencing this?
The phone is currently on 1539 ROM, I installed full gapps via recovery. However, for some unknown reason, Google now launcher, hangouts, gmail, and some others aren't showing up in app lists -- not under Installed, not under All. It's quite annoying, especially when the phone decides to go bonkers and assigns Google now as the default launcher. Or when apps start crashing, there's no option to clear cache/data.
Is this a gapps thing?

I would install a minimal package and put the apps that you need from Play.

Install from recovery the full Lenovo update again. Yes, I know, a pain, but should be a clean flash of gapps. you *can* try first to see if just flashing the new gapps package works, without the clean install (that's what I'd do ), but if you flash it and there continues to be issues, then try a clean SD install of the gapps package.

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Hehey! I thought of that solution as well, except like you said, it's a pain. So I thought of getting a second opinion. Hehe.
I also tried installing individual apks and that seemed to put them on some lists. Still unrecognizable by the phone to enable notifs.
Anyway, I guess I'll just have to go the minimal gapps way. At least I'll get to try the newer ROM update. (Dagnabbit Lenovo, fix the led notification bug.)