Interesting, sounds like they’re killing the wakelock that Caffeinate acquires then (which is what actually keeps the screen active), rather than killing the whole app itself.
That’s another one of those issues that I don’t think there’s too many workarounds for. Theoretically I might be able to have the app check to see if the wakelock is still active and if not, re-acquire it… but if there’s no way for the app to “know” that the wakelock has been killed in the first place, the only way around it would be to constantly ask Android “Is the wakelock still active? Is the wakelock still active? Is the wakelock still active?” over and over again, which would definitely lead to battery issues.
I do know it works on some Samsung devices, as I bought an old A2… something to test it on, and couldn’t find any signs of a problem there.
I mean hell, I’d love for there to be a way to not even require a wakelock for Caffeinate, but the only other way is a “soft” wakelock, in which you tell Android “Never turn the screen off while my app’s window is open”, but of course that would mean you’d need to keep the actual app window in the foreground and would defeat the whole purpose (such as my favorite usecase, keeping the screen on while I’m reading a recipe - or keeping the screen on while I’m tracking a delivery from a food delivery application).
I do know it works on some Samsung devices, as I bought an old A2… something to test it on, and couldn’t find any signs of a problem there.
I tested on A22 5g android 13.
I mean hell, I’d love for there to be a way to not even require a wakelock for Caffeinate, but the only other way is a “soft” wakelock, in which you tell Android “Never turn the screen off while my app’s window is open”, but of course that would mean you’d need to keep the actual app window in the foreground and would defeat the whole purpose
You could also do it so it requests the draw over other apps’ permission and have a small UI element keeping the screen on(if it can work). But that could complicate things a bit further. The permission being misused(by malware), and it being restricted in secure places(banking apps, settings, etc). It would be an imperfect solution.
