Power Toggles Usage Guide

Description

An advanced power control widget. FREE and No ADS

Contains following toggle options :

MOBILE DATA

  • GPRS (Mobile Data): Enable/disable mobile data like 2G,3G or 4G
  • 2G-3G toggle: Shortcut to settings screen when one can switch from 2G to 3G
  • Hotspot (Wifi)
  • Bluetooth Tether: Only works on latest devices

NETWORK

  • Wifi
  • Data Sync
  • Sync Now
  • Airplane Mode
  • Bluetooth
  • Bluetooth discovery
  • NFC: Shortcut to settings to enable/disable NFC. Direct toggle if installed as system app. Refer Root Features section

MULTIMEDIA

  • Play/Pause Music
  • Next Track
  • Previous Track
  • Music Volume

DISPLAY

  • Brightness: Four brightness modes (low, mid, high, and auto).
  • Auto brightness
  • Brightness slider
  • Screen Always On
  • Screen Timeout toggle: Three timeout levels, can be changed from settings
  • Screen Auto Rotate

HARDWARE

  • Flashlight: Not supported on many devices
  • GPS: Shortcut to settings to enable/disable GPS. Direct toggle if installed as system app. Refer Root Features section
  • Screen Lock
  • Shutdown (root)
  • Restart (root)

EXPERIMENTAL

  • WIMax (4G): Instead use Mobile Data toggle. This will most likely not work for you
  • USB Tether

OTHERS

  • Volume toggle
  • Volume sliders
  • Battery info
  • Application Shortcut
  • Other Shortcuts

Links

Market Page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.painless.pc

Sites Page: http://powertoggles.com/

Configuration screen

This screen appears when you try to add a widget, or edit an existing widget.

(Various elements on the config screen)

  1. Widget Preview: with all the toggles currently added. Click a toggle to select/unselect it
  2. Toggle reposition bar: Only visible when a toggle is selected. Move it to reposition the toggle left and right.
  3. Toggle name: Label of the currently selected toggle.
  4. Custom icon button: Click this button to change the icon of the currently selected toggle. You can choose from images in the gallery, icon packs, and some predefined icon. Custom icons are explained in detail in the next section.
  5. Remove toggle: Removes the currently selected toggle. Not available when there is only one added toggle.
  6. Copy background: Copy background settings from an existing toggle.
  7. Copy colors: Copy button colors from an existing toggle.
  8. Button Colors: The three colors for the toggle icons. The colors in order represent three states of a toggle: Off, Working, On.
  9. Options Menu: For importing and exporting widget settings.
  10. Add Toggle: Adding another toggle to the widget. Displays a list of all available widgets.

Custom Icons

With version 3.8 widgets can have custom icons with for toggles.

There are a few toggles, which still do not support custom icons (Brightness, Brightness Slider, Volume, and Battery Info).

To change the icon, select the toggle and click the change icon button (No. 4 in the above diagram). From the list, select the appropriate choice and you are done.

Custom icons may be affected by the button colors.

If a toggle is supposed to change states (On-Off, like WIFI or GPS), the corresponding button colors will be applied to the icon.

If the toggle does not change state (like Volume slider, Mobile Data settings, Play/Pause, Next track, Prev Track, Screen lock App shortcuts and other shortcuts) the button colors will not be applied to the icon.

The screenshot was taken with various icons applied from MetroStation icon pack.

Application Start Screen

  1. This shows the total number of widgets you currently have on your home screen. Clicking on it will popup a list of the widgets, allowing to edit one of them.
  2. Click on it to enable/disable the notification widget.
  3. Settings for notification widget.
  4. Ability to pin the notification widget on the top of the notification list. On jelly Beans, this is done by changing the notification priority. On previous versions, there is an accessibility service, which needs to be enabled to pin the widget on top (clicking on the icon will take you to that service).
  5. Application preferences

Application Preferences

Various application level preferences in order

SETTINGS

  • Enable Haptic Feedback: The device will vibrate on clicking any of the toggle
  • Widget margin: A horizontal margin is added to all home screen widgets.
  • Auto Collapse Status Bar: The status bar will close on clicking any toggle.
  • Notification Priority: Only available on Jelly Beans and higher, this controls the priority level for the notification widget.

BATTERY CONTROLS

  • Battery Poll Interval: How frequently the app should check for battery changes. This is only active when you have atleast one widget with “Battery Info” toggle added, or the notification widget icon is set to battery info.
  • Use custom battery colors: This indicates the the widget will use this fixed set of colors of “Battery Info” toggle, and not the colors from the widget theme. This is only meant for “Battery Info” toggle and NOT the notification widget icon color.
  • Battery Levels: The battery percentage values when the “Battery Info” should change colors.
  • Motorola 1% battery hack: On some motorola devices, battery changes occur at 10% rather than 1%. The app will try to use a workaround to get accurate battery info otherwise this setting will automatically disable.

BRIGHTNESS CONTROLS

  • Brightness: The three brightness levels for the brightness toggle
  • Enable quick toggle in slider: Show the above set three values in brightness slider for one click brightness change.
  • Enable Auto Brightness: Enable this to make the brightness toggle cycle through auto brightness mode also.

VOLUME CONTROLS

  • Mute volume sliders: If you enable this, the volume sliders will not play a sample music on changing the volume levels.
  • Notification volume sliders: If you enable this, a slider for changing notification volume will also be available in the set of volume sliders.
  • Volume toggle modes: Select the modes to cycle through with volume toggle. At least two modes must be selected.

OTHERS CONTROLS

  • Screen Timeout: The three timeout values for the “Screen Timeout” toggle.
  • Use WiMax as Shortcut: This “Wimax Toggle” is experimental, it may not work on many devices. Enabling it, will cause the toggle to open the corresponding settings screen, instead of trying to enable/disable wimax itself.
  • Use USB Tether as shortcut: Same as “Wimax Toggle”, it will cause the “USB Tether” toggle to open the corresponding settings.
  • Open white screen with flash: An experimental option, Enable this if the flashlight toggle is not working for your device.

Root Features

If you do not know what does ‘root’ means in the context of android, this section is not for you

If your device is rooted, you can have 1-click GPS and NFC toggle. The app needs to be installed as an system app for this feature.

To move it to system app use any available program like /system/app mover or Titanium Backup or any similar program.

If you have installed the app as a system app and still want those shortcuts, use Other shoutcuts > Settings.

What is Battery Pull interval

Currently there are two ways available to get the battery updates in android.

The first method is to start a service, which gets notified when the battery changes. This method is preferable for running apps, like music player or games. But when you have a service running, the app is not cached by the system (inactive apps are automatically cached and paused by android to reduce resource consumption). And so the whole app is always sitting on your device RAM.

The second method is to periodically check for battery changes, using android inbuilt AlarmManager (its is different for the Alarm app). This way the app can be cached when it is not being used. This method is used in the Power Toggle widget.

When an alarm is received, the app is brought to the RAM by the android system, the apps does the processing (like checking if the battery has changed, and accordingly update the widgets), and then after a few seconds of inactivity is cached back to the background.

This is also what happens when the user clicks on a toggle in the widget. Most of the time, the widget is in cached (paused and inactive) state. On clicking a toggle, the system brings the widget to RAM, notifies the widget of the click (and the widget processing follows accordingly), and after a few seconds sends it back to cache.

One more benefit of using the second method is that alarms can automatically be disabled when the device is on standby, and so the there is no polling in standby mode.

The second method is prefered for apps, which don’t generally do much processing all the time like widgets.

FAQ

1) Can the GPS toggle be single click instead of a shortcut to system settings?

No. Direct GPS toggle is not possible due to security restrictions on android. Only the “Power Control” widgets which comes preinstalled with the device and do this. One click Toggle is however possible on rooted devices, see Root Features section

2) Where is the 4G toggle button or the 2G toggle button?

There is an unified “Mobile Data” toggle button, which should work for all networks (2G/3G/4G). On some mobiles Wimax toggle would also work. Simply add this toggle and change the icon to whatever suits you.

3) The flashlight is not working on my device.

Flashlight is only supported on a limited number of devices. I am not able to support many devices as I don’t have access to those. You may try the setting “Open white screen with flash”.

4) Can the notification widget icon be removed.

No. Current android API does not support a notification without an icon. You can instead use a transparent icon (and yes I know that there appears a blank space in the status bar due to it). On jelly beans you can also set the notification priority to “1” to truly remove the icon.

5) The notification widget is pushed to the bottom when a new notification arrives.

Android currently does not support adding a notification which is always on the top. You can pin the notification on top (Item 4 in Application Start Screen section). If you enable this on Jelly Beans, you will no longer be able to truly hide the notification icon.

6) Why does the app requires CAMERA permission

This is required for the flashlight to work.

7) I am unable to uninstall the app.

Make sure that you have deactivated the Device administration. Go

Settings > Security > Device Admins > Power Controls > Deactivate.

Note that you have to deactivate it only if you had activated it once for suing the screen lock toggle.

8) I cannot toggle between 2G and 3G plans

It is not possible in android to toggle directly between 2G and 3G plans due to security restrictions. It can only be done from the settings screen. You can use “Mobile Data Settings” toggle to quickly reach the settings screen.

9) Clicking on the notification shows another list of choices

On Gingerbread(2.3), buttons in notification widget is not possible. This feature was introduced in Honeycomb (3.0). It is an android issue, and cannot be fixed in the app.

This a compatibility mode which I have implemented specifically for this android version. Please upgrade your device.

10) Extended notification options like “Call back” for missed call or “Share” for screenshots are not available if notification is pinned at top (on Jelly Beans)

Jelly Beans introduced a functionality of pinching and expanding the notification. If you pin the notification on top, the other notifications appear in a collapsed view. Simply pinch (zoom using two fingers) on the concerning notification and the quick options will reappear.

If you unpin the notification widget so that it is not at the top, then other notifications will appear expanded by default.