I have an task switching app on the Android Market called AppSwipe!
and one of the most commonly requested features is the ability to
launch my app by long-pressing the home button. Since this is not
possible, I created a way to launch AppSwipe! by double-pressing the
home key.
This feature has been out for over a year and my users love it.
However, I recently received an email from one user who was reporting
some strange behavior when using this functionality... essentially,
the home app is getting killed and taking a long time to restart.
When this occurs there are some other UI issues as well (such as
folders launching with transparent backgrounds and such). It only
happens on very specific devices and I can't reproduce the problem.
Here is the general process that I am using to implement the double-
press of the home button:
1) I created an activity that declares itself as a home replacement
app (see XML below)
2) I have a user-modifiable setting that allows the user to specify
which home app to launch from the home button.
3) When the home button is pressed, my "home replacement" activity has
the following logic:
a) The first time the home button is pressed a timer is
created and started in onResume()
b) If the timer finishes, then the user-specified home app is
launched
c) If home is pressed again and the timer is still running,
then I cancel the timer and launch my app
Here is the XML that declares my "home replacement" app:
<activity
android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar"
android:name=".HomeLauncherActivity"
android:label="@string/app_home_launcher_label"
android:launchMode="singleInstance"
android:stateNotNeeded="true"
>
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.HOME"/>
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
Here is the onResume() method that runs the timer:
@Override
public void onResume()
{
super.onResume();
if (m_prefMgr == null)
m_prefMgr = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this);
if (m_pkgMgr == null)
m_pkgMgr = getPackageManager();
//First Home Button Press
if (m_timer == null)
{
int launchThreshold =
m_prefMgr.getInt(getString(R.string.pref_button_launch_home_click_threshold_key),
PrefSettings.DEFAULT_DOUBLE_PRESS_HOME_THRESHOLD);
m_timer = new AppSwipeHomeLaunchTimer(launchThreshold,
launchThreshold);
m_timer.start();
}
else //Second Home Button Press
{
m_timer.cancel();
m_timer = null;
boolean swapHomePress =
m_prefMgr.getBoolean(getString(R.string.pref_button_launch_swap_buttons_key),
PrefSettings.DEFAULT_SWAP_HOME_BUTTON_BEHAVIOR);
if (swapHomePress)
launchHomeApp();
else
launchAppSwipe();
}
}
Here is the code for my launchHomeApp() method:
public void launchHomeApp()
{
try
{
String pkgName =
m_prefMgr.getString(getString(R.string.pref_button_launch_default_home_app_pkg_key),
"");
String className =
m_prefMgr.getString(getString(R.string.pref_button_launch_default_home_app_class_key),
"");
Intent launchIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN);
launchIntent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_HOME);
launchIntent.setComponent(new ComponentName(pkgName,
className));
launchIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
startActivity(launchIntent);
finish();
}
catch(ActivityNotFoundException e)
{
launchAppSettings(R.string.error_select_home_app);
}
}
Any ideas on what can be done?
One interesting thing to note is that the user who reported this
problem said that if they use ADW.Launcher as the home app and turn on
the "System Persistent" option (which is supposed to prevent the
Android OS from killing it) then the problem goes away.
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