Is it possible to write an Android broadcast receiver that detects when the phone wakes up?

Question

I want to figure out how to detect when the phone wakes up from being in the black screen mode and write a handler for that event. Is that possible? It seems like this would be something a Broadcast Receiver should handle? Or is there a better or more proper way?

Answer 1

If you have a Service that it active you can catch these events with

registerReceiver(new BroadcastReceiver() {

  @Override
  public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
    // do something
  }
}, new IntentFilter(Intent.ACTION_SCREEN_ON));

However this relies on having a perpetually running service which I have recently learned is discouraged because it is brittle (the OS likes to close them) and uses resources permanently.

Disappointingly, it seems it is not possible to have a receiver in your manifest that intercepts SCREEN_ON events.

This has come up very recently:

android.intent.action.SCREEN_ON doesn't work as a receiver intent filter

also

Android - how to receive broadcast intents ACTION_SCREEN_ON/OFF?

Answer 2

You could also have a broadcast receiver that catches the USER_PRESENT broadcast intent for when the user has unlocked the device. Naturally some versions of Honeycomb don't honor this but for all non brain-dead versions of Android (2.x and 4.x), it works nicely.