Unable to open a card from the device control quick settings tile

[proletarius101]

Reproduce steps:

1. Add a card to catima
2. Add that card to the device control tile
3. Quit catima
4. Open the card from the device control tile by tapping it once
5. Nothing happens

Expected behavior:
The card opens

Catima version: 2.29.0
Android version: 14

[TheLastProject]

I can reproduce this by rebooting the emulator as step 3 (for context, I don't know how you define "Quit Catima" here. IIRC a "force stop" is not a reliable test as that causes Android to block delivery of some intents).

Interestingly, this works fine on Android 13, it broke in Android 14. And long-pressing the card in device controls shows it fine, just short pressing doesn't do anything.

Looking at logcat, I do see a message stating "Background activity launch blocked":

2024-05-11 10:36:38.687   558-2278  ActivityTaskManager     system_server                        W  Background activity launch blocked [callingPackage: me.hackerchick.catima.debug; callingUid: 10190; appSwitchState: 2; callingUidHasAnyVisibleWindow: false; callingUidProcState: BOUND_FOREGROUND_SERVICE; isCallingUidPersistentSystemProcess: false; balAllowedByPiSender: BackgroundStartPrivileges[allowsBackgroundActivityStarts=false, allowsBackgroundForegroundServiceStarts=true, originatingToken=null]; realCallingPackage: me.hackerchick.catima.debug; realCallingUid: 10190; realCallingUidHasAnyVisibleWindow: false; realCallingUidProcState: BOUND_FOREGROUND_SERVICE; isRealCallingUidPersistentSystemProcess: false; originatingPendingIntent: null; backgroundStartPrivileges: BackgroundStartPrivileges[allowsBackgroundActivityStarts=false, allowsBackgroundForegroundServiceStarts=false, originatingToken=null]; intent: Intent { flg=0x10000000 cmp=me.hackerchick.catima.debug/protect.card_locker.LoyaltyCardViewActivity (has extras) }; callerApp: ProcessRecord{afd8460 3979:me.hackerchick.catima.debug/u0a190}; inVisibleTask: false]
2024-05-11 10:36:38.688   558-2278  ActivityTaskManager     system_server                        E  Abort background activity starts from 10190
2024-05-11 10:36:38.688   558-2278  ActivityTaskManager     system_server                        I  START u0 {flg=0x10000000 cmp=me.hackerchick.catima.debug/protect.card_locker.LoyaltyCardViewActivity (has extras)} with LAUNCH_MULTIPLE from uid 10190 (BAL_BLOCK) result code=102

[TheLastProject]

It's quite hard to find documentation on this. My first idea was to just guard the code on Android 14 with a Toast to explain to users to long-press (not perfect, but an okay workaround for now):

    @Override
    public void performControlAction(@NonNull String controlId, @NonNull ControlAction action, @NonNull Consumer<Integer> consumer) {
        consumer.accept(ControlAction.RESPONSE_OK);

        // Android 14 doesn't allow us to start an activity from the background anymore
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.UPSIDE_DOWN_CAKE) {
            Toast.makeText(this, R.string.long_press_to_show_card, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
        } else {
            Intent openIntent = new Intent(this, LoyaltyCardViewActivity.class)
                    .addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK)
                    .putExtra("id", controlIdToCardId(controlId));
            startActivity(openIntent);


            closePowerScreenOnAndroid11();
        }
    }

But of course, Google has another fun surprise up their sleeve: Suppressing toast from package by user request. (Sure, "by user request"...)

Seems that even telling an user from the background that they need to long-press requires Catima to ask for notification permission even though I currently don't have any other need to ask for notification permissions and this will not make sense to users. 😞

[proletarius101]

However, long pressing still won't bring up catima from the lock screen 😔

[TheLastProject]

It seems a bit buggy just after boot but aside from that I can't reproduce that:

Screen_recording_20240511_112906.mp4

[proletarius101]

Seems to be relevant to https://developer.android.com/about/versions/14/behavior-changes-14#safer-intents

But the activity is exported 🤔

[proletarius101]

Maybe this https://developer.android.com/guide/components/activities/background-starts#exceptions

Note: Starting from Android 14, apps targeting Android 14 or higher must opt in to allow background activity launch when sending a PendingIntent. To opt in, the app should pass an ActivityOptions bundle with setPendingIntentBackgroundActivityStartMode (ActivityOptions.MODE_BACKGROUND_ACTIVITY_START_ALLOWED)

If that's the case, there's a bug in Android...

[TheLastProject]

I found out today that apparently Samsung's Android skin ("One UI") doesn't have any effect on long-pressing an entry, just moving it around. Given this extra limitation on Samsung devices making the only workaround I could think of not universally possible I think the only logical option that remains is disabling this functionality on Android 14+.

It sucks for those who do prefer to open cards this way but well, our hands seem tied here...

[proletarius101]

On the other hand, I'm curious how it works for the google home app 🤔

[TheLastProject]

I don't think Google will let us take a peek into the kitchen :P But it may be worth looking at the Home Assistant Android app, see if the same issues exist there and if not how they do it.

[proletarius101]

I can confirm that single tap work for Google Home

[TheLastProject]

I have been having the same issue with Home Assistant actually so we can't look at Home Assistant how they did it.

My guess is that the issue is that this feature doesn't start an app in the background so Android itself fails to communicate when the app got killed from OOM or hasn't started yet because the phone just restarted.

This might be avoidable by starting on device start and on schedule, which may be necessary for notifications anyway. But it's just... guesswork, I couldn't find any documentation on this issue.