I have an app which requires input when resuming from inactive state (a security view). When resuming from inactive after some time, the UI will freeze for 1-5 seconds before entry can take place on the security view. Following this with Instruments, I see some views have been dealloc'd when memory is needed for other apps. Works as it's supposed to.
The UI freeze appears to happen when lots has been dealloc'd, and the app is reconstituting the dealloc'd views. I'm seeing viewDidLoad's fire etc. Trouble is, the security view has already appeared, giving the user the expectation they can enter their passcode. The app is temporarily unresponsive, which is disconcerting to the user.
I would like to deal with this better, perhaps displaying the security view only when the app is ready for user input.
What's a good way to do that, or is there another suggestion?
Have you included a screenshot of this view as the launch image? It's possible that while the app is loading, it's just showing this screenshot, and giving the impression that the app is frozen, as it won't allow user input on the screenshot.
Related
I've taken over a project that handles which screen to show first in the "applicationDidBecomeActive" function inside the AppDelegate. This has been causing problems because whenever the app asks for a permission sometimes, not all, it will trigger this block of code and send the user to the incorrect screen. I'm not sure what to do since I've never encountered this before. Any ideas why this is occurring or ways to circumvent this? I've tried adding a flag variable, however, that doesn't seem to work consistently because it looks like it gets un-set before the applicationDidBecomeActive is triggered.
When system notifications such as Permissions are presented, the application is sent to background, or becomes "inactive". When the Permission notification is dismissed, the application becomes "active" again. This would explain why didBecomeActive is triggered.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplicationdelegate/1622956-applicationdidbecomeactive
I've taken over a project that handles which screen to show first in the "applicationDidBecomeActive" function inside the AppDelegate... Any ideas why this is occurring or ways to circumvent this?
The simple answer is: don't do that work in applicationDidBecomeActive(). As you've seen, the application can become inactive and then active again while the app remains in the foreground, so that's not the right state transition for what you're doing. Identify the app state transitions where you really do want to choose a screen. For example, you might want to do it when the app launches, and also when it transitions from background to foreground, so you could use application(_:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:) and applicationWillEnterForeground(_:). (Obviously, you don't want to put the same code in both places, so put it in a separate method and just call it from those two methods.)
Apple has a document that covers this very topic: Managing Your App's Life Cycle. There's also a lot of information on application states on the UIApplicationDelegate reference page. Both documents include helpful state transition diagrams and descriptions of what the various states mean.
As a solution; you can use the applicationWillEnterForeground(). It's being called before the applicationDidBecomeActive() and not being triggered by permission request.
My iOS app seems to be quite "laggy" between various functions (tabBar clicks, alert views, button presses, etc...) I have use the Xcode Leaks Instrument and do not see any memory leaks in the app. Is there something else I can do to narrow down what could be making the app feel "sticky"?
There is about a 1 second pause between various actions. This doesn't happen every time, but happens enough to notice. Also, if my app has been running in the background, when it comes to the foreground there is also a bit of a pause where the screen freezes up before the user can interact with app.
Any advice would be great!
Check your viewWillAppear methods, if there are lot of things going on there, then there'll be a lag when you switch tabs. Instead if you shift your viewWillAppear operations into your viewDidAppear methods (assuming they don't effect the UX), then the lag will not happen
Sorry, I am new to iPhone development and my google searches have failed me, so I have had to resort to posting a potentially idiotic question on SO.
I would like to write an app that, when suspended, performs an action when the user presses the home or power button (presumably to unlock the phone). I read the section in the iOS App Programming Guide's App States and Multitasking and the "Processing Queued Notifications at Wakeup Time" discusses handling queued events upon waking up. However, this isn't what I'm after.
I'd like to know if it is possible to:
From the phone sleeping state (I couldn't find a document for phone states, so I am talking about the case where the user presses the power button to turn off the screen), I would like my app to be ready to respond to the event where the user presses the power or home button (to unlock the phone)
I would like my app to respond to the event that occurs when the user unlocks the phone. I found an answer here that's close.
I don't want any funkiness when calls come in, get ignored, etc. :)
From what I can tell, it's a very gray area in the API around locking and unlocking, and I'd like to verify whether or not I'm wasting my time trying to do this.
It looks like I can use the accelerometer to detect when the phone is locked, but I also assume that I won't be able to count on this behavior in all future versions of iOS.
EDIT - I think I can handle the locking and unlocking requirements by assuming that the application has to be running at the time the phone is locked and unlocked, but I still cannot figure out if it is possible to determine #1 above, which is that the power button has been pressed and the unlock screen is displayed. Likewise, I'd like to know if the power button has been pressed again and is no longer displayed (i.e. screen is off).
All of the behaviors for your app being suspended/backgrounded are in the document you referenced. The AppDelegate will receive these messages and pass them on to whatever view you want to listen for them.
-applicationWillTerminate
-applicationWillEnterBackground
-applicationDidBecomeActive
-applicationWillResignActive
You can set up a notification observer in your view if you would like the view to be notified of any of these events. Then just override them or set up a custom method to do any work that needs to be done.
While the Apple docs might be a little foggy at first, all the information is in there to let you know which state your app will go to and how it will be handled. It is up to you to figure out what your app needs to do for each of these events. Hope this helps.
In one of my apps when returning from background I get a non consistent behavior:
Sometimes I get the default.png and sometimes I get a snapshot of the last screen which the app was in.
In both cases it takes the UI a good second or two to respond again.
Therefore I would rather show the default.png rather then "unresponsive UI"
Is there a way to make the app display the default.png always until the app becomes active again?
Currently the "stupid" way to do it I thought about is by displaying some Modal view with the default.png and removing it on return to foreground.
Few Clarification:
I am doing this to avoid unresponsive UI.
I am using the default.png as it looks like loading and gives a better experience then unresponsive UI
The app has to run in background.
(And to whoever asked - no it is not closed when I sometimes return and see the default.png and not the last UI state - App loading from the start has a very different path and I'm sure of that)
Thanks in advance.
This is not a correct behavior and you may experiencing a bug. Basically as long as your app is in the background, when you launch it, you should not see the default.png, unless you remove it from background (double click on home button and delete that app).
For future people interested in this you can use the fact the last view in the app is used to be displayed when the app loads back.
You can display a VC as your moving to background which will represent some loading - hence achieving the desired behavior.
I've already seen a few other apps using the same behavior in cases operations are ran when coming back into the app.
Most probably, you are taking too long (performing too many calculations) in methods such as applicationWillEnterForeground:, applicationDidBecomeActive:, etc. As a simple test, try commenting out the code in these methods and see if the problem occurs again.
Simply set in your Info.plist the property "Application doesn't run in background" to YES. The app will never go in background and when the home button is pressed it will be simply terminated. So you're back to the pre-iOS4 behavior.
Note that when you see now the default image at start-up it is simply because your app has been terminated while it was in background. This is normal especially for apps that take a lot of memory and then don't free it enough before going in the background (I think the threshold for the OS is about 18MB but I'm not sure)
I have used to loading a default image in my appication. So i have set to,
Sleep(3); in my delegate.m class.
But sometimes it will take more than 6 to 7 minutes. So i want to display the image 3 seconds only and then it goes to my appilcation based on my requirements.
Which one is best way to do that?
Sleep(3) or [NSThread sleepForTimeInterval:3.0] or something else;
And i must display the image 3 seconds only. Please explain me.
(Note: And I declared setter and getter methods only in my deleagte class.)
Please explain me.
As Rob noted, Apple strongly recommends against a splash screen unless it hides some necessary behind the scenes process (like loading game graphics.) It is so strongly discouraged that some people have claimed that their apps have been rejected for using an unnecessary splash screen.
The default.png doesn't exist to create a splash screen. Instead it exist to allow you to create the illusion that your initial view loads faster than it does. You supposed to use it to provide an image of your initial view so that the enduser can begin to cognitively orient themselves to the interface. By the time they have oriented themselves to the interface and moved their finger to touch the interface, it is live.
Why? Because iPhone apps are supposed be quick in, quick out. People don't sit down to use them at a desk like a desktop. People use then on the go. Sometimes they use them in the middle of a conversation.
I tell my clients to test out the usability of their apps (except for games) while walking, riding an exercise bike etc as well as in the middle of a face-to-face and phone conversation. In those circumstances, a three second pause is a big deal and very noticeable especially if the app is a practical app. Imagine if every time you opened the Contact app you had to pause three seconds to see an Apple splash screen. You would get peeved in a hurry.
The key thing here is that an unnecessary splash screen doesn't add any value for the user. It is a selfish act on the part of the software publisher to eat the end users time so that the publisher can build brand recognition for the sole benefit of the publisher. Wasting three seconds of the users time every time they use the app adds up in a hurry. (In my experience, it also makes the user perceive that the overall app is slow and clunky.)
However, if you do want to shoot yourself in the foot or if you have a client hell bent on a splash screen, you do it like this:
The splash screen appears until the first view loads so you delay the loading of the first view. In the app delegates applicationDidFinishLaunching: method, remove all the code that loads the first view into the window. Replace it with a NSTimer. Put the code to load the first view in the timer's fire method.
With that setup the app will display the default.png as it launches, when it gets to applicationDidFinishLaunching:it will appear to pause from the end users perspective because no view will appear to replace the default.png.
You should note that the standard launch time for an app is 3-5 seconds. So you may not have to do anything to show the splash screen for 3 seconds. It might happen automatically.
Apple strictly recommends against this (using sleep in this way), especially in the scenario of showing a splash screen.
The best thing to do is create a view that looks like your Default.png file, then have that be the first NIB.. you could then set an NSTimer to transition (with animation if you want) to your main view/window/controller.