How to put my app to run “Always On Top” using Phonegap?

Question

I need to run my app always on top of the android system, while the user will be able to exit the app only with his own password. I was told that in order to do that i need to setup and run a Service of my own.

My question is can and how it is done using Phonegap and Jquery. How do i define and run my own service? Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

First, don't do that. I know that doesn't sound like an answer, but trust me, it actually is the answer. What I mean is, no, you don't want your app to be "always on top of the android system." Use the actual Android lifecycle and participate as a good citizen, don't abuse it and try to keep your app always running. I know you may have a use case that makes you think you need to do that, but you most likely don't.

Second, you can write a native service (not JS) and keep it running in the background. This is a a standard Android service. You'll need to create a PhoneGap plugin to hook into your app via the service (or you can create this yourself outside PhoneGap, either way). Then you can either do work in the background, or bring your app to the foreground via the service.

This answer may help: Creating an Android Service with Phonegap? (Have phonegap app run even when closed)

Third, again, don't do that. Most long running services are a bad idea (not all mind you, some use cases require it, a music player, etc, but most do not). It's a much better idea to create an IntentService and schedule an alarm (via AlarmManager) to launch it in the background periodically if you just need to do some occasional background work (fetch data, etc). Regardless of the use case though, a long running background service will consume a lot of resources and make users justifiably wary of your app.

Answer 2

I don't think Phonegap will let you create a service solely in javascript. To be able to make a service, you will have to write at least some native code. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/10427975/1721527.

I've never used Phonegap, but I think you can create a native plugin to talk to the javascript. See http://docs.phonegap.com/en/2.1.0/guide_plugin-development_index.md.html.

See Android documentation on services at http://developer.android.com/guide/components/services.html.