Android background task image stale bug
I discovered this issue recently and was very concern thinking this is my App problem. After verifying, confirm this issue, would likely be found on any App that have link access to external browser e.g. Chrome.
I have tested on GooglePlay App, GoogleMap App, Candy Crush App etc. Not so on Facebook or Twitter as they have their own internal webview to view the Browse content.
Demonstrate the issue
I’m using the GoogleMap App to show the issue.
First I go to the Map View (pick India’s map), and onBackground it to snapshot the current image as the background task image.
Then I get back onto the GoogleMap app. From there I open up a location detail, and look for a link to the website of the location.
Then I open the website, and Chrome is launched.
Now I onBackground the Chrome (intending to go back to my GoogleMap App). I could still see the India map on the GoogleMap App task image. (which is a bug)
Upon click the GoogleMap App, the India map image is still shown for a little while before the actual content came back. (which makes the bug apparent)
The entire process could be seen in the gif below.
The above might be easily detected, and say user doesn’t mind as user might not get confused.
Making the issue more confusing causing
But imagine if the captured image is the detail information of another place, then user will be confused with the initial image shown and follow on with the correct one. Demo in below gif.
TL;DR;
The above mentioned issue is also tested in Android P (Beta), and it still persist. Since it’s more of an OS issue, I will not fix it for my App 🙁
If you App enable link to open a webpage in external browser (e.g. Chrome), do test it out, as per my above steps. You should see the issue too. If not, let me know how you do it, would love to learn how to solve this problem.
