Lock WinRT apps (prevent suspending them)

Question

Is there a way to keep a winrt application from going into suspended state when I navigate to another winrt app. For example, If I am listening to Pandora in the WinRT browser ( the music stops playing ) until I go back into the WinRT browser.

Also, If I let the screen go off, the the winrt apps seem to go into a suspended state ( the music stops playing if listening to pandora in the browser ).

 

I understand this is probably happening to save battery. Is there a way to lock a winrt app from suspending?

 

Thanks,

 

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STBraley

Answer 1

Currently, there is not a way to close or stop a suspended app.

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Marilyn

Answer 2

I don't want to stop it. In fact I want to just the opposite. I want to prevent it from going into a suspended state. Specifically I want IE to continue streaming my music while it is not active, or the screen is off.

 

It seems to me like this is a big oversight.

Thanks for your reply,

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STBraley

Answer 3

The assumption is that things like Pandora would be written as an app and one of the things apps have the ability to do is conyinue playing music despite being suspended. IE could be changed to do this, I guess, but it doesn't seem like a common scenario for a web browser.

Answer 4

Gotcha,

I didn't realize an app could continue to play music despite the app being suspended. However, I'm not sure I agree that its not a common scenario for web browsers. Streaming makes up most of the internet traffic to date...

It may be a better question for another forum, but do you know the api needed to keep your app playing music in a suspended state?

 

Thanks,

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STBraley

Answer 5

Specifically I want IE to continue streaming my music while it is not active, or the screen is off.

Use the Desktop view.   (Menu button bottom right.)

 

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Answer 6

Ya, desktop view does do the job. However, I'm running on a tablet and desktop view is not finger friendly like the winrt apps.

 

Thanks,

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STBraley

Answer 7

I'm running on a tablet and desktop view is not finger friendly like the winrt apps.

Do you have a pen?   ; )

Also, I have just discovered this (on W7):  NtrigOnScreenMenu.  It gives me a humungous mouse pointer complete with left and right-click buttons.   It's wonderful!   Unfortunately although it seems to be loaded in W8 I haven't seen any sign of it yet when I'm using Touch.

And now, on W7, Touch has stopped working too.   Sigh.

 

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Answer 8

Ya, the pen is GREAT when I remember it :). The biggest drawback with the pen is that Samsung did not provide a way to mount it to the tablet. So sometimes I have the pen and sometimes I don't. :)

 

I haven't seen the case for the tablet yet. I'm hoping that it has a place to put the pen.

 

 

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STBraley

Answer 9

a humungous mouse pointer complete with left and right-click buttons.   It's wonderful!

In fact, apparently I have discovered a standard Tablet PC feature called Touch Pointer.  Looks like it has been dropped from W8.   Too ugly?  Too bad.

 

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Answer 10

Windows 8 does not allow users to prevent apps from being suspended that I know of, though I don't know if this is entirely correct or not. For the Developer Preview, Microsoft implemented this as part of the core functionality of Metro-style apps.

There is no way to close Metro-style apps unless you use the Task Manager. The functionality of suspending apps and forcing them to close when the PC's memory is used more is part of the current design of Metro-style apps.

Microsoft has said on the Building Windows 8 blog that there are plans to change at least part of this setup, but I don't know what those plans are.

Answer 11

I'm sure Microsoft will advertise that Metro apps that multitask are something special indeed!

Does anyone else think it's incredible that developers should have to re-develop their web apps just to get multitasking back?

Over the past few years we've seeing multi-core architectures really coming along.  Real operating systems can hope to support multitasking and multithreading better than ever.  And yet where are we heading with this "new" OS architecture?

Has anyone evaluated Windows 8 WITHOUT shaking their head?

-Noel