Lock screen navigation mode

[smsm1]

To prevent accidentally coming out of the app and losing your navigation position whilst moving, it would be good if there was something similar to the Google Navigation app whereby the app is shown in the lock screen, with the navigation updating as you move along.

[jezhiggins]

Been Googling around on this, and it doesn't really look like it's easily possible. Lock screen widgets don't seem to be officially supported, so while it can be done it's awkward.

Obvious alternative is to prevent the screen from sleeping in the first place.

[mvl22]

Another feedback or two on this in the last week, so a 'Do not lock screen while using this app' setting would be useful.

[oliverlockwood]

On LiveRide, there's a lock button in the top right to keep the screen on (which I think is the implementation Jez was suggesting in his comments above). @mvl22 Does this cover the requirements here?

[mvl22]

I think we should do the same as whatever other navigation apps like Google do. I would assume there is some kind of setting perhaps. Certainly the default should be that locking is not on while LiveRide is running.

[jezhiggins]

The whole landscpe around this has changed hugely since I first wrote the live ride stuff. At the time, you could either keep the screen on (which is what the lock does) or let it turn itself off. There was no standard way to turn it back on when something exciting was happening.

Similarly, while back in 2011/12 some apps could display fancy lock screen widgets, that required phone specific code - there was no standard API to support it. However, the lock screen widget have largely been killed by the notifications which, in these modern times, can include graphics and controls, rather than being the simple text strings they were.

So, it's all up for grabs really.

[si-the-pie]

I think that the padlock button at the top right of the map needs explaining to users. When I first saw it I couldn't figure out what it meant, indeed at one point I thought it was to freeze the map position. Anyway, now I understand that it prevents Screen Timeout from happening. So ... you have to close the padlock in order to avoid a lock screen. That does my head in!

I haven't yet thought of a good icon to indicate that the screen will stay on. But at the very least I think the button could be improved with text that briefly appears to say what the new state of the button is doing. I.e. 'Screen will stay on' or 'Screen will timeout'.

[mvl22]

I think it just needs a bit of text underneath that says either "Lock screen" or "Screen locked".

Any chance would also get the attribution at the bottom not overlaid, but put in the bottom-right corner?

[oliverlockwood]

Alternatively @mvl22 @si-the-pie perhaps you could look at https://material.io/tools/icons and see if you can come up with some better icons?

@mvl22 Please raise a separate issue to cover the map attribution location.

[mvl22]

How about screen_lock_portrait, which is gray by default but green when enabled?

Will add a separate issue - sorry.

[si-the-pie]

I've had a look thru the available icons in the material design and none of them strike me as an ideal fit for the stay awake effect.

I don't like the screen_lock_portrait icon because that is I think intended to stop rotating the screen. I already said that the use of a lock to stay on is confusing because it contradicts with 'Lock screen'. So I think that would end up as a right mess.

Thinking about the actual use case, during a LiveRide the screen should definitely stay awake while the current location lies somewhere on the route.

But keeping the screen turned on is a security issue, so really what is needed is a longer timeout. The kind of timeout longer than a wait at a set of traffic signals.

So my suggestion is to bin the button, and instead make this a LiveRide setting:

Stay awake
LiveRide will prevent a screen timeout while moving along the route.
When stopped temporarily prevent screen timeout for up to:
1 minute
2 minutes
3 minutes (initial setting)
Use system timeout (15s)

[oliverlockwood]

The scope of this is growing somewhat. Some notes from #232:

In the previous public release, the LiveRide screen stay-alive button looked like this:

In the current beta, it looks like this:

The changes proposed above are larger in scope than I'm happy to do for the upcoming release. I propose an intermediate step of just using the open padlock icon, and highlighting it green when screen stay-alive is enabled.

I've raised PR #303 to this effect.

[mvl22]

Happy that we do a fuller improvement later. Let's focus on getting this release out.