iPhone Activator 1.75~beta3 battery drain

[lukejc1]

I've noticed that Activator 1.75~beta3 available in Ryan Petrich's repo has a noticeable effect on my battery life. I uninstalled the beta and went back to 1.7.4 and it seems to have gone back to normal.

Has anyone else experienced issues with this new beta?

 

[tygrubb]

Based on your post I just looked up and noticed that my battery is halfway gone. Didn't think it should be that low this early in the day. Updated to beta 3 this morning. Will continue to watch it.

 

[Qaanol]

I’m still at 85% battery on my 4S after updating to the latest beta this morning.

The only change I’ve noticed (aside from the new gestures available) is that single-tapping the Home button when asleep (or on the lock screen) triggered my single-tap-home-button-on-springboard action to show the switcher, rather than just waking up the device to the lockscreen like it used to.

I went into Activator and removed the lockscreen-single-tap-home-button action (which was set to AppSlide, as that is what I have set for “Anywhere” for that button) and it now works just as it used to, as I want it to.

…although it also looks like I will have to go in and manually re-add the “Do Nothing” action into the plist for lots of gestures, but I’ll probably wait until the full non-beta release for that.

 

[hatersgonnahate]

looks like ill hold off on upgrading

 

[BumpyFlatline]

I’m still at 85% battery on my 4S after updating to the latest beta this morning.

The only change I’ve noticed (aside from the new gestures available) is that single-tapping the Home button when asleep (or on the lock screen) triggered my single-tap-home-button-on-springboard action to show the switcher, rather than just waking up the device to the lockscreen like it used to.

I went into Activator and removed the lockscreen-single-tap-home-button action (which was set to AppSlide, as that is what I have set for “Anywhere” for that button) and it now works just as it used to, as I want it to.

…although it also looks like I will have to go in and manually re-add the “Do Nothing” action into the plist for lots of gestures, but I’ll probably wait until the full non-beta release for that.

Thanks for sharing. Been considering trying the newest beta version.

Can you elaborate on the "Do Nothing" plist edit? I am not familiar with this practice. Do you do it to all unused gestures so they are completely disabled and therefore making activator "more leightweight"? If true, I was under the impression gestures were turned off if nothing was assigned. Is that assumption wrong? Please share your knowledge. I only use activator for swiping left and right on status bar to invoke BiteSMS QC. I have no other gestures assigned and if all the unused gesture methods are "active" then they are unnecessarily running and I would like to implement this "do nothing" plist approach to turn them off.

Anyways, thanks in advance.

 

[mikeydeezy]

Thank you for this post.


I've been experiencing an insane battery drain and I've blamed everything except Activator. Now let's hope my battery improves.

 

[kalirob99]

I've noticed this myself on all my devices since the upgrade, bummer. :/

 

[Sital]

Just out of curiosity, is there any compelling reason to be using the beta version over the latest stable one?

 

[BumpyFlatline]

Just out of curiosity, is there any compelling reason to be using the beta version over the latest stable one?

New features. Check the changelog to see what exactly is new.

 

[darricksailo]

Thanks for sharing. Been considering trying the newest beta version.

Can you elaborate on the "Do Nothing" plist edit? I am not familiar with this practice. Do you do it to all unused gestures so they are completely disabled and therefore making activator "more leightweight"? If true, I was under the impression gestures were turned off if nothing was assigned. Is that assumption wrong? Please share your knowledge. I only use activator for swiping left and right on status bar to invoke BiteSMS QC. I have no other gestures assigned and if all the unused gesture methods are "active" then they are unnecessarily running and I would like to implement this "do nothing" plist approach to turn them off.

Anyways, thanks in advance.

I was not aware the do nothing feature was part of the beta but I have only started using it in beta2 or beta 1. I do not see any mention anout do nothing in the change log. Were you referring to something else? Are you referring to this?

If you are, then it just allows you to disable the default actions. For example, I have set long hold to do nothing so if Siri is enabled, it won't activate Siri but you can still use Siri dictation.

 

[Qaanol]

Can you elaborate on the "Do Nothing" plist edit?

One of the actions that Activator lets you assign to a gesture is “Do Nothing” (override default behavior.) But for some reason, a few versions back, Ryan Petrich decided to make it so you can only assign “Do Nothing” to certain gestures.

Notably, he made it so you cannot assign “Do Nothing” to swipe-in-from-top-corner gestures. I used to use those as part of my efforts to prevent the NC from ever appearing, before some tweaks came out to totally disable the NC altogether.

So, nowadays I do not really have a need to assign “Do Nothing” to any gesture, but I still like having the option to do it if I want to—I strongly dislike being artificially prevented from assigning an action to a gesture, whether or not assigning that gesture will actually do anything.

 

[pod5g]

What is the repo? I want to upgrade. I am currently on 1.7.4.

 

[lukejc1]

What is the repo? I want to upgrade. I am currently on 1.7.4.

http://rpetri.ch/repo/

 

[BumpyFlatline]

One of the actions that Activator lets you assign to a gesture is “Do Nothing” (override default behavior.) But for some reason, a few versions back, Ryan Petrich decided to make it so you can only assign “Do Nothing” to certain gestures.

Notably, he made it so you cannot assign “Do Nothing” to swipe-in-from-top-corner gestures. I used to use those as part of my efforts to prevent the NC from ever appearing, before some tweaks came out to totally disable the NC altogether.

So, nowadays I do not really have a need to assign “Do Nothing” to any gesture, but I still like having the option to do it if I want to—I strongly dislike being artificially prevented from assigning an action to a gesture, whether or not assigning that gesture will actually do anything.

Ohhhh ok that makes perfect sense. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it.

 

[pod5g]

I just downloaded 1.7.5b3 on my iPod touch 3G running 5.1.1 and I've had no battery issues.

On a side note, though, I'm glad to see some new features. Not a huge change, since I upgraded from 1.7.4 to 1.7.5b3. The upgrade was worth it, though, I'm excited to see what Petrich will bring in 1.7.5b4 and the eventual public release of 1.7.5.

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

Doesn't any version of activator drain the battery? I don't usually run it, but when I do, I notice battery drain.

To my understanding, for something like that to work, it has to constantly run in the background and every input must be "watched" to see if it should activate anything.

 

[pod5g]

Doesn't any version of activator drain the battery? I don't usually run it, but when I do, I notice battery drain.

To my understanding, for something like that to work, it has to constantly run in the background and every input must be "watched" to see if it should activate anything.

Yes, but the OP is saying that 1.7.5b3 caused a faster battery drain than usual.

 

[lukejc1]

Doesn't any version of activator drain the battery? I don't usually run it, but when I do, I notice battery drain.

To my understanding, for something like that to work, it has to constantly run in the background and every input must be "watched" to see if it should activate anything.

Of course it will drain the battery. That's expected with almost any tweak. My issue with this beta is that it would drain my battery MUCH faster than previous versions. With 1.75b3 I would get about about 3.5-4 hours of usage. While with 1.7.4 I will get around 6-6.5 hours of usage.

 

[ECUpirate44]

Has this been fixed with the latest beta?

 

[kalirob99]

Has this been fixed with the latest beta?

I think so..
I could be wrong though, still best to ask the author. :/ I don't use Twitter, so I tend to get my info here.

 

[TNT93]

latest beta (beta 7 - june 5th) says "removed additional memory use introduced in beta 3" this is most likely the problem and has hopefully been fixed I still haven't updated from the normal release yet but i'm certainly tempted to now, lots of cool new features been added over the 7 betas.