wakelock

Plugin that allows you to keep the device screen awake, i.e. prevent the screen from sleeping

The plugin allows you to enable and toggle the screen wakelock, which prevents the screen from turning off automatically.
Essentially, this allows you to keep the device awake, i.e. prevent the device from sleeping.

Supported platforms

Usage

To use this plugin, follow the installing guide.

The wakelock plugin does not require any special permissions on any platform
This is because it only enables the screen wakelock and not any partial (CPU) wakelocks that would keep the app alive in the background.

Implementation

Everything in this plugin is controlled via the Wakelock class.
If you want to enable the wakelock, i.e. keep the device awake, you can simply call Wakelock.enable and to disable it again, you can use Wakelock.disable:

import 'package:wakelock/wakelock.dart';
// ...

// The following line will enable the Android and iOS wakelock.
Wakelock.enable();

// The next line disables the wakelock again.
Wakelock.disable();

For more advanced usage, you can pass a bool to Wakelock.toggle to enable or disable the wakelock and also retrieve the current wakelock status using Wakelock.isEnabled:

import 'package:wakelock/wakelock.dart';
// ...

// The following lines of code toggle the wakelock based on a bool value.
bool enable = true;
// The following statement enables the wakelock.
Wakelock.toggle(enable: enable);

enable = false;
// The following statement disables the wakelock.
Wakelock.toggle(enable: enable);

// If you want to retrieve the current wakelock status,
// you will have to be in an async scope
// to await the Future returned by `enabled`.
bool wakelockEnabled = await Wakelock.enabled;

If you want to wait for the wakelock toggle to complete (which takes an insignificant amount of time), you can also await any of Wakelock.enable, Wakelock.disable, and Wakelock.toggle.

Ensure the WidgetsBinding is initialized

If you want to call Wakelock.enable() or the other functions before runApp() (e.g. in main()), you will have to ensure that the WidgetsBinding is initialized first:

void main() {
  WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized();
  Wakelock.enable();

  runApp(..);
}

In general, it is advisable to make your wakelock dependent on certain components within your app instead, e.g. by only enabling it (continually) when a certain widget is visible. There is no negative impact in calling Wakelock.enable() more often.

Calling Wakelock.enable() in main()

As touched on in the previous paragraph, calling Wakelock.enable() in your main() function is not the best approach for a number of reasons.

The most important factors are:

1. Users expect their screen to automatically turn off unless e.g. a video is playing.
   It is unlikely that your whole app requires the screen to always stay on.
2. The wakelock can be released by external sources at any time (e.g. by the OS).
   Only calling Wakelock.enable() once will most likely mean that the screen turns off at one point or another anyway.

This is why you should instead prefer to enable the wakelock whenever components inside of your app that require the screen to stay on are active. This can e.g. happen in the build method of your widget.

Learn more

If you want to learn more about how this plugin works, how to contribute, etc., you can read through the main README on GitHub.