Windy App (Details) Widget impairs Launcher performance (upon canvas resize?)
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I've downloaded the App (APK of 28.1.1) mainly for the widget, but the "Detailed" Widget renders my launcher notably less responsive. I'm using the KISS launcher and the phone is a somewhat dated and low-end "Cubot J5" with the standard Android 9, but I haven't had any performance problems elsewhere.
As soon as the widget is on the home screen, KISS' favorite icons take a good 1.5 seconds to render after the onscreen keyboard appears. The same happens when entering the application list, where the keyboard disappears; then there is a short freeze.
It appears to be related to the keyboard shrinking or reliquishing drawing area. The fav icons render instantaneously initially, but when the keyboard appears, thus shrinking the home canvas, they disappear and then only re-appear after said delay.
- A few more tests seem to confirm this correlation: No matter in which way I make the keyboard appear/disappear within the launcher, there is always this delay. It does not happen within other Apps though, only within the launcher.
- Further, this also happens with the "Forecast" widget, but it does not happen with the "Radar" widget (the latter only shows "Failed to retrieve data" for me, may it would happen if it retrieved data).
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@manday Hello, could you please record a video of this issue?
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@korina hi, sorry for the delay, I expected an email when someone replied. I uploaded it here https://imgur.com/a/NxR73iW (I don't have enough privs to upload here).
NB: Normally I have animations (in Accessibility) disabled, I enabled it just to make sure.
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@manday Hello, based on the video, I cannot see the exact issue with the widget. If you phone renders the widget/other programs slowly, it is likely connected to the old hardware. I would suggest to upgrade to a newer phone.
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@korina I do not understand what you mean "I cannot see the exact issue with the widget". Do you not recognize the delay after the keyboard appears/disappears? Do want me to show you a reference video with another widget (for example Geometric Weather), where the delay does not happen so you can see the difference?
My phone has no problems rendering other widgets or programs of any kind. But as soon as the Windy widget is on the home screen, things become unresponsive.
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Here, I made you two videos for comparison:
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@manday Hello, this is something we are not able to affect, it is likely a hardware issue. Newer phones does not have this issue. Nevertheless, we are about to release a new update with reworked widgets, it may help your issue.
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@korina Hello and thanks. The phone can effortlessly display 3d renderings, games, and other, more sophisticated things on the home screen. I'm positive that Windy's performance impact when displaying a static image in the background can not be blamed on a lack of hardware.
That seems to be an issue of insufficient software design or simply a bug (for example if Windy tries to re-draw the entire widget each time the screen size changes, instead of retaining a copy of the drawn widget in cache - but I'm not Android developer so my speculation is fruitless). In any event, I'm not going to buy a new phone for this.
I'm looking forward to the new widget. Do you have an ETA perhaps?
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@manday Hello, the update is already in release, you should receive in a matter of days.
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@korina Yeah, I was just greeted by the splash on the website. Great news, I have a good feeling about. Keep up the good work :)
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@korina I'm afraid the new widget did not improve things for me but the opposite. When I add the widget to the home screen, there is now only a message "Couldn't add widget" in place of the widget.
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@manday Hello, could you please try to reinstall the app and try adding the widget again?
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@korina Yes, this seems to have been a glitch. The widget displays now.
Sadly, I have to report that the problem which this thread is about has not been resolved. Version 29.2.4 of Windy still causes said delay with the KISS launcher.
I also tried the standard "Quickstep" launcher. The problem does not occur there. Then again, the standard launcher does not show the keyboard on the home screen and might have an entirely different infrastructure. My suspicion is simply that Windy does not re-draw effectively, which could be remedied by adding a cache.
I would appreciate if your dev team could look into this. KISS is one of the most popular launchers. Windy is not Open-Source, so it doesn't seem to make sense that I ask the KISS developers for help. Thanks.
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@manday Hello, we will try to fix this in the next releases.
