How to make live update of glance widget?

Question

Is that possible to make live update the data of Widget using Glance jetpack compose ? Like update data while database is changes . For example while I am using flow so flow should be able to update the widget data right?

We can update on Click action like :

class MyWidgetActions: ActionCallback {


    override suspend fun onRun(context: Context, glanceId: GlanceId, parameters: ActionParameters) {
                updateAppWidgetState(context, PreferencesGlanceStateDefinition, glanceId) {
                it.toMutablePreferences()
                     .apply {
                       ...
                       //toDoSomething()
                       ... 
                    }
                }
                MyWidget().update(context, glanceId)
             ...
    }

Can we update without on click with flow of data ?

Answer 1

Update: since Glance beta01, recomposition is supported. Thus you can now consume flows/livedata and run side effects inside your composables. Although those will only be active while your process is alive.

Outdated below:

You can update the widget instance from anywhere of your app by using one of the update methods, but you cannot subscribe or observe any flow/livedata inside the Widget Content/Composables methods.

Although that means that your app must be running, so you would need a service running. We don't recommend to have "live" widgets updating constantly since it could cause battery drain.

Rather use WorkManager to schedule periodic updates.