Updating time of clock widget

Question

I am looking at creating a clock widget that tell the current time but if the minimum time you can set for the widget is 15 minutes thats obviously not going to work.

I also see suggestions on using AlarmManager but then I worry about the battery life.

I also see the intent action Intent.ACTION_TIME_TICK that fires every minute and seems like what I want but as the documentation says

You cannot receive this through components declared in manifests, only by explicitly registering

So that seems like its not going to work for a widget

So the question is, is there a "correct" way to build a clock widget that does not kill the battery and still updates the current time?

Answer 1

If you are talking about a Digital clock , Android added a TextClock layout widget on API level 17 . you can simply add it to your widget XML and it will automatically show the time. Example:

        <android.widget.TextClock
        android:id="@+id/clock"
        android:format24Hour="k:mm"
        android:format12Hour="k:mm"
        android:gravity="center" />

I actually just made (this week) an open source android digital clock widget , feel free to browse and use my code. pull requests will be much appreciated! I'm sure it will be helpful to you since I stumbled a bunch of surprising walls on the way. https://github.com/y0av/MaterialClockWidget

if you want anything other then a digital clock you will need to use an AlarmManager like you mentioned.