To keep from updating when the screen is off, use the AlarmManager to schedule a recurring alarm that doesn’t wakeup the phone. The other two bullet points you have in your question aren’t possible. There is no way to detect if your widget is on a home screen that isn’t currently visible, and there is … Read more
After a long time, I got free to solve this problem. Here is what I did. FlashlightWidgetProvider class : public class FlashlightWidgetProvider extends AppWidgetProvider { @Override public void onUpdate(Context context, AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager, int[] appWidgetIds) { Intent receiver = new Intent(context, FlashlightWidgetReceiver.class); receiver.setAction(“COM_FLASHLIGHT”); receiver.putExtra(AppWidgetManager.EXTRA_APPWIDGET_IDS, appWidgetIds); PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(context, 0, receiver, 0); RemoteViews views = new … Read more
While you have android:updatePeriodMillis set to 20 seconds, the minimum actual time is 30 minutes. So, if you have not been waiting 30 minutes to see if there is an update during your testing, you will need to wait a bit longer. Android Documentation – updatePeriodMillis
Providing an answer after digging into the source code: 1) This is expected behavior see here This method is also called when the user adds the App Widget 2) Seems you have found your own answer. For others looking for the docs go here Note: Updates requested with updatePeriodMillis will not be delivered more than … Read more