Laur IVAN

Add Wear Notifications to Android App

TL;DR: Use android.support.v4.app notification mechanism. Steps are: Create a WearableExtender:

NotificationCompat.WearableExtender wearableExtender = 
    new NotificationCompat.WearableExtender()
    .setHintShowBackgroundOnly(true)
    .setHintHideIcon(true)
    .setContentIcon(R.mipmap.ic_launcher);

NotificationCompat.WearableExtender wearableExtender =

new NotificationCompat.WearableExtender()

.setHintShowBackgroundOnly(true)

.setHintHideIcon(true)

.setContentIcon(R.mipmap.ic_launcher);

Extend the notification mechanism:

NotificationCompat.Builder mBuilder =
    new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)
        .setContentTitle(title)
         .setStyle(new NotificationCompat.BigTextStyle().bigText(msg))
         .setContentText(msg)
         .setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_stat_e)
         .setLargeIcon(BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.mipmap.ic_launcher))
         .extend(wearableExtender);

NotificationCompat.Builder mBuilder =

new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)

.setContentTitle(title)

.setStyle(new NotificationCompat.BigTextStyle().bigText(msg))

.setContentText(msg)

.setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_stat_e)

.setLargeIcon(BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.mipmap.ic_launcher))

.extend(wearableExtender);

Trigger the notification:

NotificationManagerCompat.from(this).notify(NOTIFICATION_ID, notification);

1	NotificationManagerCompat.from(this).notify(NOTIFICATION_ID, notification);

After reading various sources, I got my application to send notification to my watch using the code above. At the beginning, I thought the notifications weren’t sent. I thought I needed to enable wear in the manifest (which I did), but… notifications were sent, just the watch was on charging dock and was’t doing anything :(. To make sure things were OK, I’ve enabled vibration:

Notification notification = mBuilder.build();
notification.defaults |= Notification.DEFAULT_VIBRATE;

NotificationManagerCompat.from(this).notify(NOTIFICATION_ID, notification);

Notification notification = mBuilder.build();

notification.defaults |= Notification.DEFAULT_VIBRATE;

NotificationManagerCompat.from(this).notify(NOTIFICATION_ID, notification);

Note: You need <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.VIBRATE"/>…read more

Oct.16

Android: Make Your Notification even Sticky-er

Posted by laur in Software

In my previous post, I’ve expanded things to make a notification sticky. This worked in my tests until yesterday, when I’ve found a new case where my notification would go away: Build an sticky notification as per the two previous posts Activate the notification – this will trigger the activity to be displayed on screen. The notification will remain shown Activate the notification again – this will make the notification go away, because the activity is already on screen I’ve tried triggering the notification in onCreate() , onStart(), onPostCreate(), onResume()…read more

Oct.14

Android: Make Your Notification Sticky

Posted by laur in Software

Following my quest from the previous article, I realised that my app would not be in the foreground, like an email, browser or a game might be, but it would work without any GUI, using something like a cron job. This is all nice and lovely, but I’m not fond of applications doing stuff behind my back. I’ve seen in various applications that do something similar a pattern: there’s something on the screen telling me (the user) the application is running. That “something” is usually an icon on the status…read more

Oct.14

Android: Notifications with Custom Layout

Posted by laur in Software

In the previous entries, I have managed to display a notification and make it sticky. Now, since the app I’m developing is supposed to be visible mainly through this notification, I wanted to see if I can customise the actual content. Yes, I know there are options by default, like: Small and large notifications Add some buttons to perform actions However, I wanted to see if I can, for example, add some icons and buttons like Sonos notification does: It turns out that, with a bit of work and an…read more

Oct.13

Android: Display a Notification

Posted by laur in Software

One of the applications I’m thinking about I want it designed like the notification-based applications you see out there (Light Flow from reactle comes to mind). To be able to do this, I first need the app to display a notification on the device as a first step. The code to trigger a notification is pretty simple and you can find a lot of resources online with various options. To cover for a lot of cases, I ended up over-engineering the process a bit, in the sense that I’ve encased…read more