State And Background Footguns

Background work, services and platform runtime

• app-backup-to-zip-mediastore — Back an app up into one zip that lands in the user's own Downloads folder with no storage permission, keeping only the newest N archives. Covers checkpointing the database's write-ahead log before the file is copied, assembling the archive in cache first, inserting through the system media store, and pruning old archives with a query over that same collection. Android only. Use when a restored backup is missing the most recent writes, when the backup file is invisible to the user's file manager, or when old backups accumulate forever.
• datastore-driven-workmanager — Drive periodic background work straight from the settings store, so a toggle or an interval change takes effect immediately without a restart. Covers combining several preference flows into one scheduling decision, the update-in-place enqueue policy that lets a changed interval actually change, cancelling by unique name on disable, and why the worker must re-read the same settings itself. Android only. Use when changing a backup or sync interval does nothing until reinstall, when work keeps running after the user turned it off, or when two schedules end up stacked.
• periodic-worker-dedup — Build a periodic notifier that never misses an item when a run is delayed, and whose only way to repeat one is a kill inside a single narrow window. Covers keeping the "already handled" record in the database rather than in the worker, scanning a time window deliberately wider than the scheduling interval so a skipped run catches up, and processing oldest-first so an interrupted run loses the newest item rather than a random slice. Android only. Use when users report duplicate notifications after a device restart, when items are missed while the device is idle, or when a first run floods the user with the whole back catalogue.
• desktop-single-instance-before-di — Order a desktop app's startup so the single-instance guard runs before the dependency container and before anything opens on-disk state. Covers forwarding a second launch's arguments to the running instance and exiting, bridging a restore request from outside the UI framework into the live window, and the platforms where a second launch never produces a second process at all. Use when launching the app a second time crashes or corrupts settings, when a link opened while the app is running does nothing, or when the second window steals a file the first one owns.
• compose-desktop-runtime-hardening — The ordered list of probes, system properties and platform gates a Compose desktop entry point must run before its first window exists. Covers warming the JDK's desktop-integration API ahead of any native load, renderer and interop properties that are read once at start-up, turning off vsync where the wait can park the UI thread, gating transparency and a custom titlebar on virtual-machine detection, and setting the Linux window-class name reflectively so the desktop entry binds. Use when the UI freezes while audio keeps playing after moving the window to another monitor, when the window never appears in a virtual machine, or when the Linux dock shows a class name instead of your app.
• swappable-crash-reporting-and-dialog — Ship a build with crash reporting and a build with none from one codebase, by swapping a module that exposes three top-level functions instead of an interface, so call sites are byte-identical and the no-tracking build provably contains no reporting code. Also covers a desktop crash dialog built on the older widget toolkit, because the modern UI may be exactly what just died, and how to marshal it onto that toolkit's event thread. Use when a privacy build must contain no reporting dependency at all, when a swapped implementation is drifting from its counterpart, or when the app dies with no visible error and no way for a user to send you the details.
• kmp-logger-facade — Put one small logging object in the shared module between every call site and the logging library, so a chatty subsystem can be silenced in one line and the library can be replaced without touching call sites. Covers the muted-tag set, a level-as-a-value enum for callers that pick severity at runtime, and why a single direct import of the library anywhere defeats both. Use when one subsystem drowns the log, when swapping or upgrading a logging library means editing hundreds of files, or when muting a tag has no effect on some of its output.
• glance-widget-over-existing-state — Build a home-screen widget that renders the app's existing state holder rather than a parallel copy of it, by injecting the same shared state object and the same long-lived scope the app already uses and re-issuing the widget update whenever that state changes. Covers dispatching the app's own UI events from widget buttons, why the injection target must be a singleton rather than a screen-scoped definition, making the whole widget a tap target, turning off hardware bitmaps for artwork the widget must read, and the leak to avoid when starting those collectors from the widget's provide-glance callback. Android only. Use when a widget shows stale playback or session state, when its artwork is blank, when a tap on it opens the launcher's menu or does nothing at all, or when its buttons need their own duplicate logic.
• remoteviews-bitmap-budget — Every bitmap a home-screen widget draws is copied into the RemoteViews payload handed across a process boundary, and the platform rejects an update whose bitmaps exceed a fixed budget — so decoding each image at the size it is drawn is not an optimisation, it is what keeps the widget on screen. Covers the pixel arithmetic that decides how many images fit, why the failure is invisible outside the system log, and why every surface reading the same image must agree on both its cache key and its decode size. Android only. Use when a widget shows the framework's error placeholder, when it renders on one device and not another, or when adding one more tile empties the whole widget.
• glance-layout-vocabulary — The composable widget toolkit is not Compose with a different import — it has no aspect ratio, its weight is always 1 so an even split is the entire vocabulary, its corner radius only applies from API 31, and a widget always fills the launcher's cell so the spare height must be spent deliberately. Covers the weighted-spacer trick that keeps square tiles square, and where a fill modifier swallows a whole band. Android only. Use when a square tile renders as a rectangle, when a widget shows a block of dead colour below its content, or when corners are round on one device and square on another.
• on-demand-dictionary-asset — A tokenizer, spellchecker or analyzer needs a multi-megabyte dictionary that would bloat every install for a feature most users leave off — fetch it once, on opt-in, into a plain directory, and make every consumer ask the filesystem "am I ready" rather than trust a flag. Use when a per-language asset inflates a package on only one target, when a half-downloaded asset must never look installed, or when a feature stays broken even after its download reports success.