CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ios
Jay West
Jay West

Reputation: 177

Keep an app active in the background?

I have a volume control app in the iOS store, but one problem that my users have frequently is that the device kicks it for memory control. Is there any way to either force it to stay active (by permission) or to at least alert the user when its no longer active or in danger?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 929

Answers (2)

taddy hoops
taddy hoops

Reputation: 603

All the answers are under Background Execution in the iOS Developer Library.

Of course, here's the philosophy:

Always try to avoid doing any background work unless doing so improves the overall user experience.

See Table 3-1 for the types of background execution. There's a category for audio but it requires audio to be played from the app. It does not sound like your app fits in here. So you'll want to look at notifying the user.

You could send a notification to the user when the app falls to background with applicationDidEnterBackground(), or just before it quits with applicationWillTerminate(), supposedly time-permitting.

Upvotes: 2

Rob
Rob

Reputation: 11733

Running in the background is permitted. I have an app that does it and while the rules have changed and adapting to it has been gut wrenching at times, it is pretty straightforward. In your case, I would think that you could setup to be notified and then just disappear, no? waking from a notification is part of the state changing protocol and you should be able to do that.

As a point of comparison, in Android, background operations like yours would be implemented as services and would have no fear of being terminated. The strangest thing about the way ios chooses to allow background activity is that you are applying for status one time. In Android, I was able to indicate that a single activity should be kept alive when the app is backgrounded, all others could be terminated. There is no way to do that in ios.

I take it my disappear and wait for notifications is probably not going to work for you because there is no way to be notified of volume changes. You must be polling? In which case, you probably are going to have to ask to be kept alive. Would be nice if you could just piggyback on other services, e.g. keep me alive while music is playing.

To answer your other question, yes you will get notified if/when you really are going to get termed, so you could send a notification at that point.

Upvotes: 0

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