OS X Cocoa timer not fired when application on background

Question

A third-party library provides a function I need to call every 100ms. Setting up a timer to do that works very well as long as my app is on foreground. When my app is on background timer works for a while but after a about a minute timer is called only after 10 second delay. The same happened when I created a separate thread with usleep-function. Is there any way I can keep timer running while my app is on background?

You can check if app nap is applying using the 'taskinfo' command. — Parag Bafna, Dec 16 '13 at 10:04

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 16 '13 at 10:15

8

Use beginActivityWithOptions:reason: to disable app nap for your application.

answered Dec 16 '13 at 10:15

Parag Bafna

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Brilliant, that was the issue. After disabling app nap my timer now keeps running nicely on background. – superg Dec 16 '13 at 10:17

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 10 '14 at 11:34

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You should try and re-architect to avoid these sorts of frequent timers, especially when your application is in the background. Making this sort of change will improve battery life for your users.

answered Feb 10 '14 at 11:34

user3292666

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OS X Cocoa timer not fired when application on background

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