Keep screen on in external applications

Question

I want to keep the screen on for the duration of my activity's lifecycle. We'll call this Activity A. I do so by setting

android:keepScreenOn="true"

in the xml. This works perfectly on most screens. However, Activity A launches Activity B, which is used in other parts of the app. Is there a way to force Activity B to keep the screen on when launched from Activity A? I've read that I should avoid using wake lock; I'm curious what others' opinions are on this.

Answer 1

You can set it programmatically with:

     getWindow().addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON);

If you only want Activity B to keep the screen on when it's launched from Activity A you can achieve it like this:

When A launches B, send an extra value on the intent, On B, onCreate() check if there is a value sent and only if it founds something it's because came from A.

    public class ActivityB extends Activity {
      @Override
      protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_b);

        Bundle extras = getIntent().getExtras();
        if(extras != null) 
            getWindow().addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON);    
      }
    }