Alternatives to applicationDidEnterBackground and applicationWillResignActive? - objective-c

I've got an app that changes the screen brightness with [UIScreen mainScreen].brightness = newBrightness, and I want to restore the brightness to it's previous state when the user finishes using it.
I've tried these two delegate methods:
- (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)application
- (void)applicationWillResignActive:(UIApplication *)application
But without much success. I suspect my app must be in the foreground to change the brightness? When I change the brightness in didEnterBackgroundMethod, it has no effect at all. When I use willResignActive it does restore the brightness if I switch to another app, but it has no effect when I press the home button.
Are there any notifications or delegate methods that are executed before the app leaves the foreground?

It seems this happens to others as well: see this S.O. post.
Only way around it seems to be forgetting about setBrightness and simulating it by overlaying a black-semi-transparent on your view...
OLD ANSWER:
willResignActive should also be called when you press the home button before the application enters the background state.
This method is called to let your application know that it is about to move from the active to inactive state. This can occur for certain types of temporary interruptions (such as an incoming phone call or SMS message) or when the user quits the application and it begins the transition to the background state. An application in the inactive state continues to run but does not dispatch incoming events to responders.
This is also the behavior I witness. So, my guess (but it's just a guess) is that your app is not set to support background, so that when pressing the home button it is terminated. In this case applicationDidEnterBackground is not called.
I would suggest to check the info.plist file in your project for the UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend or "Select Application does not run in background" key.
Furthermore, you could try and put some breakpoints (or NSLog traces) in those functions and check whether they are effectively called as expected.

According to Apple´s DevForum it seems to be a bug that Apple don´t want to fix soon.

Related

How to detect and implement touch events for single tap on home button?

Not sure if it is possible but is there any way to detect a single touch on the home button. To start with, I would simply like to add an NSLog if the user touches down once on the home button (without actually pressing), but I don't know where I would add this functionality. Does Apple allow you to interact with the home button?
I looked at the app delegate methods, but I can't see how any would work in a single tap (touch) context. Would really appreciate your help.
Does Apple allow you to interact with the home button?
No, not yet. There are no APIs available to explicitly detect home button interactions.
You can rely on the traditional app delegate lifecycle function invocations to perform any logic you wanted to.
- (void)applicationWillResignActive:(UIApplication *)application
{
// Sent when the application is about to move from active to inactive state. This can occur for certain types of temporary interruptions (such as an incoming phone call or SMS message) or when the user quits the application and it begins the transition to the background state.
// Use this method to pause ongoing tasks, disable timers, and throttle down OpenGL ES frame rates. Games should use this method to pause the game.
}
- (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)application
{
// Use this method to release shared resources, save user data, invalidate timers, and store enough application state information to restore your application to its current state in case it is terminated later.
// If your application supports background execution, this method is called instead of applicationWillTerminate: when the user quits.
}
- (void)applicationWillTerminate:(UIApplication *)application
{
// Called when the application is about to terminate. Save data if appropriate. See also applicationDidEnterBackground:.
}

applicationWillTerminate not getting called on force quit of iOS app

Does anyone have any insights into when/under what conditions applicationWillTerminate is called in iOS 5/6?
I've got some logic i'd like to execute whenever the application terminates (not moves to the background), for example if the user navigates to the application bar at the bottom of the screen by double tapping the home button and force quits the app.
when i try to do this on a test device, applicationWillTerminate does not seem to get called. Is there a reason for this?
My plan B is to tie that logic to some persistent object like a singleton or a static that is automatically destroyed when the app quits.
Any suggestions?
thanks
Have you read the documentation for applicationWillTerminate:,
It says,
For applications that do not support background execution or are linked against iOS 3.x or earlier, this method is always called when the user quits the application. For applications that support background execution, this method is generally not called when the user quits the application because the application simply moves to the background in that case. However, this method may be called in situations where the application is running in the background (not suspended) and the system needs to terminate it for some reason.
There is a "maybe" mentioned there. Probably that answers your question. So it is not necessary that this will get called when you quit the app. Probably you might have to use UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend to disable multitasking and then it might get called while putting in background. But that again depends on your app requirement. If you cannot disable multitasking, you might have consider doing that in applicationDidEnterBackground method or so. I am not sure if there are any other delegate methods which will help in identifying the force quit.

Cancel all local notifications when app is closed by the user

There is a small bug in my App.
My App displays notifications at specific times when the App is running and cancel all of them whenever a button is switched.
My problem is that whenever a user closes the App using the multitasking feature of iOS the notifications are still showing up.
I tried to add the following code which doesn't work:
- (void)applicationWillTerminate:(UIApplication *)application
{
// Called when the application is about to terminate. Save data if appropriate. See also applicationDidEnterBackground:.
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] cancelAllLocalNotifications];
}
The problem is that my App should show notifications when the App is running but shouldn't show notifications when the App is terminated.
Why does the above code not work?
The correct answer is that this cannot currently be done by a multitasking app. One solution is to set a flag in our info.plist declaring your app wants to be killed when the user switches to another app - then you will get the willTerminate message (but get killed then).
There are huge numbers of threads on this topic, one which quotes an Apple doc that tells you backgrounded apps that are terminated do NOT get the willTerminate message is here.
For me, this just means I can now close an open bugreport out with a 'cannot fix' resolution :-)
Just because your app is visible in the app-changer, it doesn't mean it is still running.. it can get closed at any point. You cannot differentiate between the OS closing your app or the user closing your app.
Perhaps a button would be the solution? A button that cancels all notifications?
Or you run a real background task (which can last for about 5 minutes) and stop all notifications afterwards. Or you just schedule the notifications for the next 5-10 minutes and that's it.
For what are you using them?

Problem: restarting App

My App is a view-based application. At the beginning I show my logo and after a delay of a few seconds it changes into another view. from then on the user can switch to a lot of different views.
Sooooo.. My Problem: The thing is, when I restart my App. [..well closing and reopen by touching the icon..] the app itself doesnt restart in the sence of jumping to the very first view. to the contrary: at restart the user just returns to the last view that was open.
So I dont know why this is.
Is it normal to somehow manually tell the app to return to the very first view after restart? And if so, how do I have to do that?
PS.
I have so no idea what to do.. Maybe my problem has to do with the timer i used in the first view to change after a delay of time?
Please, is there anyone, who can help me?
Your problem is that, as of iPhone 4, returning to the home screen does not terminate your app. It's just made inactive, so opening it again reactivates it. In most cases, this is a good thing. If it doesn't work for your app, you can add the UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend key to your Info.plist with a value of YES.
(As I said, you should only do this if it really helps usability. If it's just about getting your splash screen shown again, most users and possibly Apple will frown upon it.)
iOS 4.0 and greater have a fast-start thing that allows apps to restart back from where they were upon restarting. There are several ways to deal with this:
1.) your App Delegate receives info about being but into the background and resumed. - (void)applicationDidBecomeActive:(UIApplication *)application and - (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)application are the relevant functions here. Check the docs.
2.) You can also disable the background, inactive state completely by including UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend in you Info.plist as Chuck already pointed out.
Overall, you should check the application state docs on Apple's Side.

- (void)applicationWillTerminate:(UIApplication *)application

I found this method in a delegate file and inserted some code. The code never gets executed, even when the home button is pressed. When or how does this function get called?
You should use applicationDidEnterBackground method if your app and OS support multitasking.
From applicationWillTerminate docs:
For applications that support background
execution, this method is generally
not called when the user quits the
application because the application
simply moves to the background in that
case. However, this method may be
called in situations where the
application is running in the
background (not suspended) and the
system needs to terminate it for some
reason.