The KDE Connect Android app and the desktop application stay connected as long as the Android app is open or remains in the background (like say, tapping the circle while the app is open) However, the connection is lost if the app is cleared from Recent app list (long press the square and swipe the KDE Connect app) For people like me who often clear the Recent app list, I find myself having to constantly open the KDE Connect app on my Android phone. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Launch the KDE Connect app on Android phone. 2. Pair the device to computer 3. Clear the app from the "Recent App" list. Actual Result: The network connection between the Android app and the paired computer is severed as soon as the app is swiped off Recent List. Proposed Result: The network connection remains connected even after the app is swiped off from the "Recents" list. I would very much like to contribute to resolving this issue on the KDE Android app. I propose two viable solutions to resolve this issue: 1. We can override onTaskRemoved method on org.kde.kdeconnect.BackgroundService class to restart the network connectivity. 2. Create a Foreground service which stays on the Notifications as soon as the Android app is launched. We can set this Notification priority to NotificationCompat.PRIORITY_LOW to "keep it low" for the user.
We're going to implement the second suggestion sometime this summer (because it's required for Android Oreo). I'm not sure that will actually fix the issue though: I think swiping an app away will also close its notification? Otherwise, I think there's not much we can/should do: if the system requests the app to shutdown, I think we should listen to that. PS: swiping away recent apps is not recommended anymore. It slows down future start-ups of these apps, and Android automatically closes apps if needed. Unless you don't like the clutter, you're actually slowing down your phone and wasting battery life.
That's great news. It is true that swiping the app will close the notifications however if the notification is Ongoing state i.e. Notification.FLAG_ONGOING_EVENT the notification stays on top untouched. I tried creating a patch for it but I'm not sure I understand how the connection is between the device works. Is the network connection persistant (stay connected forever type) or the connect -> do action -> disconnect type? I'm working on the second suggestion and have managed to create a notification on MainActivity however I'm not sure how to perform the background tasks through it. Some thoughts on this are very appreciated. Thanks for the advice. I'll keep that in mind.
We already have implemented this on the "oreo" branch, although the branch might need some more work to actually work well on Oreo. The connection is persistent.
So I've just checked the commit and I see we are yet to initate the resource-heavy, blocking tasks through the service. I'll try to come up with a patch in a few days with having the device remain connected after app is swiped off Recents. As a WIP, I'll later focus on bringing the plugins to do the same esp. SftpPlugin.
Hello! I think this has been implemented in the last version 1.10. Though, I'm not a fan of it. I have some questions about it: - how much power does it need when only the foreground service is working? - when active, the foreground service will automatically connect to known computers (if connection lost). What about privacy issues? What is sent on the network to detect known computers? - how hard would it be to add an option for the user to disable this option (and kill the app as soon as we swipe it)? A bit of background to explain my unwillingness about this feature: I use KDE Connect with my home computer (mainly in the morning or in the evening). During the day, I leave to work, so I kill the app, and only reload it in the evening. I don't want a service to use battery when I know I won't use it. Also, I don't want my phone to try to connect to any computer as soon as my Wifi is on... Finally, I don't want to have a continuous notification for something I don't use (when I'm at work, I don't care to know that KDE Connect is not connected to any computer, I already know it). So I disabled this notification from the settings. And now Android is telling me that KDE Connect is wasting battery and that I should kill it... Other than that, I really like this app :D Thanks for it! Best regards,
We now have a persistent notification.