FDroid client keeps starting in background even if automatic updates are disabled

First of all, thank you very much for maintaining this open source client and repository.

My use case is simple. I simply want to launch FDroid once every 1-2 weeks and update all my applications manually. I do not want any kind of automatic updates so I have disabled anything related in the settings.

Despite that, the FDroid app keeps starting itself very often. I cannot provide any detailed log at the moment, but the first case is that it always starts on boot and displays a notification about updating something. I am not sure what it actually updates though as automatic updates are disabled. The app also seems to start in background every time there are changes in WiFi connectivity (e.g. when WiFi gets disabled and enabled).

Would it be possible to simply keep the FDroid client completely closed and silent when automatic updates are disabled? This is a big problem for me because a) my mobile data monthly limit is very low so I do not want anything to use it for no reason, and b) my main device has just 1 GB of RAM so I do not want any apps run in background for no reason.

I would be very grateful if something could be done about the aforementioned issues. Right now I am basically forced to completely freeze (pm disable) the FDroid app in order to keep it under control.

F-Droid version 1.4? Did you disable “automatically fetch updates” and “automatic update interval” slide to “no automatic updates” all the way to the left?

Yes, the settings were set like that and this was happening very recently with one of the 1.4 alpha releases. I have just installed 1.4 so I will check the situation again and report back later.

Edit: So I did check version 1.4 and the unwanted behaviour is still present. This time I also actually have the logcat. Here is the FDroid related part:

09-16 23:25:19.928  2280  2513 I ActivityManager: Start proc 3009:org.fdroid.fdroid/u0a75 for broadcast org.fdroid.fdroid/.receiver.WifiStateChangeReceiver

But does it stay running? If only gets triggered by the network change, and then stops, it won’t use battery/memory.

When it comes purely to battery drain, no, I do not think so.

The problem is that because of how Android works, just starting the app kills other apps that have been cached in background. And this happens very often, especially when moving around outside and connecting to different WiFi networks. Please keep in mind that we are talking about a low RAM device here. Plus, I personally do not see any valid reason for it to keep starting like that at all, especially when all automatic updates have been disabled :face_with_raised_eyebrow:.

You need to detect when a connection is ON, hence F-Droid asks Android to notify it, now it just gets notified and starts, then sees it was disabled and quits.

Not sure how this can be improved.

@hans Thoughts?

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Well, I do not know how the FDroid client is coded, but cannot such checks simply be completely disabled when automatic updates are switched off? What is the need to detect a connection in this situation?

It’s possible through “Autostarts” and similar tools

Yes, and that is no different to using the native “pm disable” command which I mentioned in the very beginning. I just think that this is only a workaround to a problem that should not really exist.

There are many ways related things could be improved. Some are well
known, and are just waiting for someone to implement them. For example:

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