Allow mic / recording while screen is off?

[craigeley]

Hi there — I've been working on a tool to improve the light voice memo recorder; one that can record uncompressed wav files and utilize USB-C mics like the Shure MV88. I have had it working on my modified LPIII for a while now and I'm interested in porting it over with the SDK.

However, yes, I'm vibecoding this, and my agent tells me that right now there is no sanctioned way for an app to keep audio recording if the screen is off. The workaround it came up with is an interop View with keepScreenOn = true while recording, but that doesn't seem right to the agent or me. One thing it suggested is a LightServiceMethod like BeginAudioCapture/EndAudioCapture where LightOS holds a mic foreground service on the tool's behalf.

Maybe this isn't a worthwhile path to explore if you plan to add uncompressed recordings to the stock voice memo app? But it might be nice to have a more robust recording app available.

[dupontgu]

Yeah I agree that keepScreenOn is not ideal, but I also agree that recording while screen is off is a totally reasonable UX that we will try to support. Much like media playback, we'll need to have one "shared" audio input stream between tools. Whether we do that via LightOS as you propose here or can figure out a way to do it naturally using the Android APIs - TBD.

[mrrobashcroft]

Does the standard camera tool allow external mic via USB-C for video recording at hthe moment? I tried with my Rode Wireless Go and a jack to USB-C adaptor and did not get the audio from the mic. I wasn't sure if this was a glitch in my setup, or a current limitation in the camera tool?