Apps as background processes

Former Member
Former Member
I'm new to MonkeyC, but didn't see anything about this in any of the FAQ's or other resources, sorry if I missed it somewhere.

As far as I can tell, all apps are run as foreground activities, and are exited when native apps are opened via Intents. Other types like data-fields can be added to native apps, but disallow communications.

I'm trying to make an app that coordinates music playing from a smartphone with activity metrics (cadence, HR, etc). Is there a method to send live activity data to a phone while using the device's normal display & behavior for the activity? Ideally there wouldn't need to be any UI on the device at all, beyond activation/deactivation.

Thanks!
  • There's no way to have a app that runs in the background with CIQ.

    If you wanted to write a full running app (including all the useful things in the native run app), it could do the comm to a phone for changing the song, etc, based on some metrics, etc, but then you'd also need to write a companion app on the phone itself.
  • Former Member
    Former Member over 8 years ago
    Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. So looks like the only way is to essentially re-implement the native run app with the addition of live data transmission to the smartphone app.
  • Hello. Has something changed in this matter? Is there really no workaround? I'm new and wanted to do some tweaking in home automation.

    What i see is that every ... App i do not care about can send BLE notifications but it seems impossible to design a background app that uses BLE to listen to sensors or smartphone events and use the Attention module, otherwise doing nothing.

    I do not understand why this is not supported. Garmin Connect can use the BLE interface unlimited once its paired. And i do not need to start this anywhere. It's just running in the background. That is what i want. Technically this is possible. Why is it not implemented for everyone?

  • This is very basic, but has a background service that gets data from a Thingy52 that's displayed on a watch face.

    https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/8182/a-very-simple-wf-with-a-background-that-talks-ble-to-the-thingy52