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I'm currently having issues with my widget. I'm using a Droid 2 phone and when I open the keyboard the screen rotates and my widget never calls the onUpdate() function call.

In efforts to debug the issue I overwrote the onReceive() and noticed that after the screen is rotated I get the intent action:

com.motorola.blur.home.ACTION_WIDGET_ADDED

After the rotation of the screen the TextViews loose their content so I need to be able to set text after the rotation. I usually set the text at the onUpdate() call.

Anyone have any ideas why this issue? I'm sure I'm doing something wrong...

Thanks,

-Jona

Jona
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    What specific issues are you having? Does the widget rotate when the orientation changes? If the home application is maintaining a bitmap with the widget's contents and its geometry doesn't change during a screen rotation, there's would be no reason to waste CPU cycles by forcing updates. – Blrfl Feb 14 '11 at 18:44
  • The problem is not with the actual UI. The problem is that after the rotation of the screen the TextViews are reset so I need update the text. – Jona Feb 15 '11 at 03:49
  • Have you tried running your widget under the stock launcher, either on your phone or in the emulator? I don't see that kind of behavior with the stock home app or HTC Sense, and the presensce of a Blur-specific broadcast when the orientation changes makes it sound to me like Motorola is handling it by deleting and re-adding the widget. (Which makes me wonder what they do when the widget has a configuration activity.) – Blrfl Feb 17 '11 at 14:33
  • This posting is also related (somewhat): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7766779/widget-doesnt-refresh-after-configuration-changes – Coder Roadie Apr 02 '15 at 21:08
  • So is this one: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3078980/auto-screen-rotation-disabling-widget-remoteview-onclick-event – Coder Roadie Apr 02 '15 at 21:16

1 Answers1

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After a lot of testing and searching online I realized something so important about Widgets.

When the screen is rotated and the widget needs to be restored the Android system will restore it using the data from the last RemoteViews update.

I was updating parts of the widget separately so when it needed to restore only one part got updated.

The fix is always update everything on your RemoteViews all at once.

Jona
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  • I know this is an old answer but I hope if you can help me out. I created a home page widget that works well. But when the phone becomes in landscape mode, the textview and imageview looses their content and they are reset to their value in the xml file. However, the listeners on the buttons works well. I am updating the widget's component separately, how can we update everything in the remoteview at once? – Ziad Halabi Jun 12 '15 at 14:49
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    after so many years and this is the answer i was looking for! i was using using the method onAppWidgetOptionsChanged() to change the size of the textviews accoding to the new size of the widget but i was only updating the textviews sizes rather than all elements. THANKS – Saul_programa Jun 07 '18 at 08:19