From my understanding, any app installed directly from Google Play should be in the sandbox and have access to Google Play Services. I haven’t quite worked out where the steps are missing, but it seems when the game is open it’s fine, and when the game hasn’t been killed by the OS it’s also fine. If I go back to the game and it has to launch again from scratch, it doesn’t seem to count steps that happened while the game wasn’t running (foreground or background).
I also see this post where others are seeing the same thing, and are not using GrapheneOS. Maybe my use of GrapheneOS is a red herring and there’s actually something else happening.
It was always odd to me that apps need to be constantly active to get the steps. I don’t get why the phone doesn’t just count in the background then allow you to request “how many steps today” or “how many steps since X date/time” via the API.
schamppu@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
The game doesn’t need to be active on regular Android. I’m pretty sure the reason why it’s like that on GrapheneOS is that when the game is killed, the sandbox is killed and the Google Play Services shut down. If Google Play Services aren’t on there, the Recording API will not count steps in the background.
Probably easiest solution is to let WalkScape to run in the background, when it’s freezed the battery consumption should be basically nothing.
Dave@lemmy.nz 5 days ago
That makes a lot of sense.
It’s allowed to run in the background, but I have now disabled battery optimisation and will see if that helps.
schamppu@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
Yeah - battery optimization has tendency to kill apps, even if they’re not consuming resources. If you’re experiencing battery drain from doing this (or if it works fine), I’d appreciate if you send me your findings to our contact email address ❤️
Dave@lemmy.nz 5 days ago
It doesn’t seem to be helping. If I ever work out a more reliable way to get steps counted I’ll let you know. I know some pedometer apps don’t need Google Play Services and use a persistant notification to keep it active, but it seems like quite a significant change from what you currently have which wouldn’t be worth spending time on to appease such a small group of users.