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Way to keep iPad wifi active when screen's locked?

M

mixvio

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 12, 2009
388
0
Sydney, Australia
I've tried both KeepAwake and Insomnia and they both have a problem where the iPad reboots when it's locked after a few minutes. I'm guessing it's getting the signal to shut wifi off but instead of keeping the adapter active the device just resets.

Is this just an issue because of the iPad OS? Neither app looks as if it's been updated in a while.

Are there any other tools that work on the iPad?
 
mixvio said:
I've tried both KeepAwake and Insomnia and they both have a problem where the iPad reboots when it's locked after a few minutes. I'm guessing it's getting the signal to shut wifi off but instead of keeping the adapter active the device just resets.

Is this just an issue because of the iPad OS? Neither app looks as if it's been updated in a while.

Are there any other tools that work on the iPad?
Click to expand...

Right now, not that I know of. OS 4.0 is supposed to add support for persistent Wi-Fi, though.
 
Wait, if it doesn't stay connected then how am I getting all of these push notifications while my iPad is locked?
 
I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think push notifications go over wifi, I think they go off of the fetch settings you have set up under Settings. So presumably every 15 mins or so, wifi wakes up to fetch any push notifications, then goes back off.

Or maybe push does go to wifi, and the push notifications can wake the device up when they come in. I don't know.

I do know however that the iPad and iPhone don't maintain active wifi connections when the screen's locked. If you want to test it out, log into an IRC channel on your iPad and computer and shut the device off; after a bit, your iPad will disconnect from the channel.

That's what happened to me, which was why I went looking for a solution.
 
My me.com mail arrives on my sleeping iPad & iPod touch at the same time or before it does on my MBP, and via a SMS forward on my phone.

It is set to push, and has done this since I got the devices.

No clue who is waking it up, but it is happening, never have to wait for mail to load.

I don't have anything else using push at the moment....
 
Well, the push notifications have to be able to wake up wifi as well then.

But the point is, when it's locked, it's not maintaining a consistent connection to wifi, so stuff like IRC and IM programs get disconnected when the screen's locked.
 
Okay, but you guys are missing my point. The issue isn't push notifications.

It's that when the screen is locked, wifi shuts off by design to save battery life. Whether it wakes up for push notifications or not isn't the point, because IRC and IM clients get disconnected in the process when the screen's locked. Insomnia and KeepAwake prevent that, but they're not working on the iPad. So I was looking to see if anyone had any other suggestions for iPad Cydia apps that accomplish the same function and work currently. Can we steer the thread back in this direction? :p
 
Since most streaming music apps (Pandora, PocketTunes, etc.), don't shut off when the iPad is locked, then this is not at the OS level, but rather a "function" of the app itself. However, I don't know all the magic rules that Apple has set in place for devs, perhaps streaming music apps are allowed to keep the wifi connected while other apps must use the push notification service, but anyhoot...your best bet is to install backgrounder and try running these specific apps in the background to see if it will keep the wifi connection going. Otherwise, you'll have to find a client that utilizes push notifications. (Colloquy for example, if you setup a push-aware IRC bouncer)
 
Yeah, this is with Backgrounder on and the applications in question running with backgrounding enabled. I wouldn't expect wifi to stay active on apps that aren't running in the background, but for IM and IRC clients it's a bit frustrating.

In particular both Colloquy and IM+ will disconnect if the screen is locked and I'm on wifi, then reconnect on 3G. The 3G connection stays active indefinitely though (which makes no sense to me, but okay!), but then I'm using up my 3G data when I've got perfectly good and perfectly free wifi right there.

Although if the screen is locked and the device is connected to power, wifi seems to stay on all the time, I've noticed. I ran it last night while I was asleep connected to Colloquy on mains power and I was still inside the IRC room at least as far back as the scrollback went (to like five hours previous).
 
Good ol' Apple... So if you run Pandora, pause it and keep both it and your IRC / IM client running in the background does it stay connected :) (I realize that's not the answer your looking for, I'm just curious).

Wish I could give you another suggestion, but it sounds like you've tried everything at this point. Hopefully one of the Cydia apps will get updated soon to allow this.
 
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