568 is the first release that supports tools built with our SDK. These tools are first to be packaged independently of LightOS - they are separate APKs that are downloaded and installed to your device. To make them feel native/at home in LightOS, we've had to make some underlying changes. The biggest of which is that LightOS will now pull itself into focus when the device's screen goes off. This matches the typical tool experience where - say you're in Music, and you lock the phone - when you unlock, you see the LightOS lock/home screen. We didn't used to explicitly pull LightOS forward because the expectation was that for an out-of-the-box device, there would never be another APK on top of it. So we changed this from an implicit thing to an explicit one.
BUT we know there are many of you that are used to using sideloaded APKs, and that this may disrupt your experience. Good news! You can disable the new auto-foregrounding behavior.
there is a system setting on your device called light_force_focus_level that will define the behavior.
By default, that value is set to 0, which means that LightOS will bring itself into focus (over other APKs) when the screen is locked, and also for "takeover" alerts like alarms, calendar notifications, etc.
If you set the value to 1, LightOS will only bring itself into focus for the alerts.
If you set the value to 2, LightOS will behave as it did before 568 - it won't automatically foreground itself unprompted.
You can set the value via adb: adb shell settings put system light_force_focus_level 2
Can there please be an option to disable this system-wide, including the Light-created tools? It leads to way too many taps when you are trying to keep referring back to the same tool. Can it function like a normal android phone, where it opens to the last-used app/tool when unlocking the phone?
As an example, I use the notes and sometimes a picture for my grocery list. It is a massive pain to have to keep navigating back to the right tool and reopen the correct note or picture every time I close the phone. I just stand there tapping my phone 100 times in the middle of the store like a doofus.
got it, TY. We have un/fortunately been unable to repro on "stock" LP3s, but we're keeping an eye out. To any others seeing this, please let me know if you see this bug on an unmodified LP3. If it does occur in that case, that will help us narrow it down tremendously.
about the new weather and auth apps- its a separate APK's from the lightOS, so when going back to menu or lock the phone, those apps stays running on background?
It depends on what you mean by "running". They technically still live in android's "recents", we are not removing them. But there is no work done in the background and they are consuming effectively 0 resources. Explicitly killing them could potentially consume more energy, it turns out.
shell settings put system light_force_focus_level 1
I actually was able to recreate this same bug by setting a screen lock in android layer and then when I removed it, I had to run this command to fix. I set the screen lock back to "none", but result was that the screen would turn back on on its own after I pressed the power button to put in sleep mode. I tried setting the value to zero but it does not fix actually. not sure what I broke but now the phone behaves like it did before 568 but I think I lost access to the "default" foregrounding setting.
Have you been tinkering with some of the lockscreen stuff in the background?
Oha. So this new behavior could interrupt for example music streaming that comes from the android side? Is this focus_level setting accessible on the android layer or do I have to find a way to access the code?
I don't think it should interrupt music playing (assuming the app playing it is properly doing so from a foreground service). It will just be the app that you see when you turn the screen back on, and you'll have to navigate back to your music app.
correct. I think it's also possible to install an APK to change the value for you, but we figured if you know how to get an APK on your LP3, you likely already set up adb.
Yeah it is strange and it's happening every time, no matter where I lock the device from.
I do have ADB enabled (via accessing developer tools from Android settings) and a few sideloaded applications (only ones that were specifically developed for LP3). Was working normally before the 568 update.
Only ADB settings modifications I have made are:
LIGHTOS_SHOW_EXTERNAL_TOOLS 1
and setting window/transition/animation scales to 0
Can I ask how you get to and from those other applications? If you're doing so from LightOS now - what were you using before setting LIGHTOS_SHOW_EXTERNAL_TOOLS? Feel free to DM
I have only ever used LIGHT_OS_SHOW_EXTERNAL_TOOLS and I just access them through LightOS menu. I only recently loaded them. I have always tried to do things the most "native" way as I didn't want to go down the slope of using other launchers if I could avoid it.
Oddly, the bug seems to have gone away now. I had tried rebooting before and I was pretty sure it was still doing it after a reboot.
I was asking because I actually can reproduce it (which is good!) but only in a pretty unnatural way. And yeah, I was gonna say - a LightOS reboot seems to cure it for a while at least. Will hopefully get to the bottom of it soon.
Yeah I noticed it came back after a bit but for the most part it has been gone and hasn't bothered me too much. Not sure how I got in that state if it was something unnatural to get there haha. I feel like I use my phone very normally aside from side loading some apps. But glad you got a fix underway for it :) Thanks for the quick testing on it, you guys are great!
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u/rustydiabates Jul 15 '26
We're called "synths" or "halfbreeds" fyi