Keep phone awake while uploading

[EmilEriksen]

Many of our users upload fairly large files on mobile (a few GB sometimes) which means that it takes a while and often long enough for their phone to sleep. When this happens (at least on iOS) internet connectivity is cut and uploading is stalled. Therefore it would be nice to be able to keep the phone awake while uploading.

As far as I can tell there is a web API in the works that can be used to achieve this but it's still in the draft stage. It's possible that it's not really achievable at this point in time but I wanted to post the idea anyway since I believe it would be extremely useful for many of us with mobile users that upload large files.

[arturi]

Hi! This is actually one of the reasons https://tus.io/ was created — resumable uploads mean that when the upload is stalled, you can retry it and it resumes from where it left off, instead of starting from the beginning. Uppy supports tus: https://uppy.io/docs/tus/.

As for the web API, I’m interested to learn more or if someone creates an Uppy plugin that keeps the browser awake while an upload is in progress. So please post here if you find out more or try and create a plugin: https://uppy.io/docs/writing-plugins/ :)

[arturi]

Thanks for the idea again, I think we’ll close this for now, if someone comes up with a solution when the API is ready, please let us know!

[EmilEriksen]

Hi! Sorry for the late reply - I've been on holiday. Resumable uploads are great but uploading large files could take several minutes (or even hours) and it's not ideal that the user has to constantly tend to her/his phone in order to wake it from sleep so that the upload can continue. I do think that it's probably reasonable to close this issue for now though but here are some links to resources for future reference:
Google article about Wake Lock API
W3C Wake Lock API draft
It might also be possible to do something with the Background Sync or Background Fetch APIs (not keeping the phone awake but instead uploading in the background). Background Sync is actually starting to see some support.

[florian-milky]

Hi!
This would be a really nice feature. I have the same use case

[goto-bus-stop]

I think a custom plugin based on WakeLock would be really interesting to see … it could acquire a lock when the upload event is emitted, and release it when the complete event is emitted. It should then work for any combination of uploader plugins (XHR, Tus, S3, Transloadit, etc).

e; Also adding it to our own backlog for when it's more widely supported and when we have the time.
And thanks @EmilEriksen for bringing this to our attention!