I'm currently struggling to keep my service alive when trying to get information about the user for a study. We are using a foreground service, which runs a timer on a 5-sec interval checking a resource of the user. As that resource is only relevant if the screen is on, we could stop the timer whenever the screen goes off. For this, we are using a broadcast service. All in all, this works well. The problem occurs, if the user closes the app and then puts the device on standby -> screen goes off. We would like to stop the timer and restart the timer inside that service if the screen goes on again. Now theoretically that works. I tested it with a counter variable which increments each time the run is called inside the timer. After that, I update my notification and show that variable. If however I close the app and the screen goes off, this variable is no longer updated in the notification and ergo, my resource check is not running. But I found out, that once I restart the app, the variable did indeed increase every 5sec and is then updated in the notification again. Furthermore, it is working if the device is on power/getting charged. So I guess it is a power management thing.
Summary: The ForegroundService/BroadcastReceiver is not acting like I would want to if the app is closed and the screen goes off, even though a part of it is working as intended. Works completely if the device is charging.
Do you have any ideas on how to avoid this behavior and allow the service to rerun the timer correctly so that the methods inside will work again?
Best regards,
Yukko