Pixel Watch App stalls out after phone app has not been opened for an extended period.

[Pocketpac]

Describe the bug
Pixel Watch app stalls out until app is opened on Phone after it has not been in use for a long time.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:
Attempt to open app on Pixel Watch after it has been inactive for a long time.

Expected behavior
To open and view the 2fa accounts.

App Version
1.16.2

Additional context
Pixel 4 XL running Android 13 Build Number TP1A.221005.002
Pixel Watch running Wear OS 3.5

[kylemacfarlane]

I've been getting what I assume is the same problem on my Pixel Watch. Sometimes the watch app is too slow to use or crashes every time it's opened so I give up and open the app on my phone.

But I had a ~3 week period where the watch app was blazing fast and I didn't open the phone app the whole time, so I don't think the last time the phone app was opened is the problem. In fact what seemed to end my streak was opening the phone app to add a new code.

I think #558 is probably related too.

[kylemacfarlane]

I think it might be related to the Bluetooth connection back to the phone.

The app had been unusable on my Pixel Watch for over a week. Constant crashes and unusably slow. Usually it would fix itself but not this time so I started playing with settings. I found this at least temporarily fixes it:

1. Turn off Bluetooth on the watch
2. Open Authenticator Pro on the watch
3. It will still be slow and buggy for a few seconds but as soon as the crossed out cloud icon appears at the top it will become responsive
4. Turn on Bluetooth again
5. The app reconnects to the phone and remains responsive

Presumably it's just a temporary fix.

I have no idea how Bluetooth connections back to the phone are handled but my experience smells like a pool getting filled with dead connections.

[jamie-mh]

Hi,

The latest release 1.17.0 (+ 2.7.0) brings a few changes to the way the watch syncs with the phone. Both versions must be updated.
Can you try it out when it becomes available to you?

Thanks

[kylemacfarlane]

I updated both a few days ago and so far no major slow downs but it's too soon to tell yet.

It did crash once when resuming the app but was fine on the next start.

It's still sometimes quite slow (2-3s) to open where it shows a black screen and the blue circle slowly fills. If that's because it's syncing back to the phone I'd prefer it to be responsive immediately and only sync in the background or even require manual syncs. But that's an optimisation rather than a bug.

#558 is still happening so it's probably an unrelated bug.

[jamie-mh]

As discussed in #184, when the black screen is shown, Wear OS is preparing the app for launch. The app hasn't started at this point. Also, the sync already occurs in the background, the loading circle appears when the app is reading data saved locally. A lot of the slowness is just a limitation of the platform.

[kylemacfarlane]

So far after two weeks the worst lagginess and constant crashes seem to be fixed but I am still getting random crashes when I open the app.

1. I open the app and I get a black screen and it immediately crashes. When I open the app again it's super responsive.
2. I open the app and I get a black screen and nothing happens for so long my watch goes back to sleep. I close/minimise the app and open it again and get another black screen. Repeat 2-4 times until the Authenticator Pro logo appears and then it's super responsive. The logo appearing is weird since like you said apps usually launch with a black screen.

I also sometimes get this one:

1. I open the app and it immediately shows the last used token, I swipe to go back to the full list of tokens and I get a black screen for a few seconds before the list is displayed.

[kylemacfarlane]

I hope I don't jinx it but just wanted to say it's been running great for the last month or so. Not sure if it's due to 2.7.3 or the March Pixel Watch update.

[kylemacfarlane]

The bug is back for me. After 3 months of no problems it started happening again about 36 hours after adding a new account on the phone app.

But I'm also pretty sure I added at least 1 other account in those three months so it doesn't always trigger the bug.

[holocronweaver]

I noticed this can happen when I change the sort order of my items. The items will update on Wear OS, but sometimes a few seconds later the screen will go black and become non-responsive. Usually closing and re-opening the watch app resets it, but occasionally I have to reinstall the watch app to get it to break out of eternal loading.