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Background:

I am developing an Android app. When the app starts up, it checks to see if it is excluded from Battery Optimizations using the isIgnoringBatteryOptimizations() function. If that function returns false, I use the REQUEST_IGNORE_BATTERY_OPTIMIZATIONS permission to show the Battery Optimizations Settings screen, where the user is expected to add the app to the whitelist.

This all works perfectly when I run the app from Android Studio. The trouble starts when I download and install the release candidates.

Note that the issue I will describe only happens on one of my two phones. The issue happens on a Sharp 507SH running Android 7.0. The issue does not happen on a Sony SOV32 also running Android 7.0.

The issue:

When I download and install the release candidates (not using Android Studio) and start the app, the Battery Optimizations screen is shown as normal. However, the app appears already listed in the "not optimized" whitelist right away. Normally the user has to manually select the app and add it. But it appears in the list. So the user presses the back button to return to the app and everything seems fine. However, the app is not actually in the whitelist. This is confirmed by the fact that the app prompts the user every time the app starts, i.e. isIgnoringBatteryOptimizations() is still returning false.

I can add the app to the whitelist "for real" by first going in to Battery Settings and removing it from the whitelist, then adding it back. Then the prompts disappear as they should.

Akshay Patel
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paperduck
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2 Answers2

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I am late to the conversation, but I have experienced something similar to what paperduck said above.

I cannot 100% prove it, but my experience shows that when testing on an emulator and my own device (Huawei P20 Lite), with the application installed via Android Studio, the application says that it is on the Optimisation list. Adding or removing the application from the Optimisation list does not change the returned value.

Jarrod Lange
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This may be a side-effect (bug) of previously installing the APK on the phone outside of Google Play. We are downloading and installing APK file release candidates directly from Google Drive. The phone which had a previous APK file installed experiences this problem. The phone which has not had the APK file installed directly before is not experiencing the problem.

We haven't confirmed this. It is our suspicion.

paperduck
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