AlarmManager fires alarms at wrong time

Question

I managed everything all right to create a notification service used to fire a notification as a result of an alarm. Unfortunately, setting the alarm using AlarmManager doesn't work right. It fires several minutes later (not exactly hours, which would indicate a timezone problem). The recurring period is 1 week, so I used the constant INTERVAL_DAY and multiplied it with 7. In order to make sure that one PendingIntent doesn't replace the other, I pass the dayOfWeek as second parameter to PendingIntent.getService(). I check the correctness of the time for the alarm to fire by logging it:

Log.d(TAG, "next alarm " + df.format(cal.getTime()));

Is there really no way to list all alarms set - at least those from my own app? I believe this is the only way to track down the error.

My code:

cal.setTimeInMillis(System.currentTimeMillis());
cal.add(Calendar.DATE, 1);
cal.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, hour);
cal.set(Calendar.MINUTE, minute);
Log.d(TAG, "next alarm " + df.format(cal.getTime()));
Intent showNotificationIntent = new Intent(context, NotificationService.class);
dayOfWeek = cal.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK);
alarmIntent = PendingIntent.getService(context, dayOfWeek, showNotificationIntent, 0);
getAlarmManager(context).setInexactRepeating(AlarmManager.RTC_WAKEUP, cal.getTimeInMillis(),
    INTERVAL_WEEK, alarmIntent);

I want to offer to have an alarm every day, but at various times, which can be set by the user. So I use up to 7 alarms, which should fire on a weekly basis.

Even after reading the numerous answers to similar questions (I don't intend to create a duplicate question), I haven't managed to find the problem.

Answer 1

Because of setInexactRepeating. Use setRepeating and it will be processed at the right time.

Instead of:

setInexactRepeating 

use

setRepeating

setInexactRepeating, is OS and battery friendly, it batches together all the work to be done on Alarm receive and works through one by one, while as setRepeating instantly fires the alarm

Also a note: Alarms are wiped off once phone is rebooted, you might have to implement a boot broadcast receiver to make it persistent. Make sure you dont do that runtime, you need to implement it in the Manifest else when your app is not in background you will not receive any broadcasts.

A small example:

This is working code. It wakes CPU every 10 minutes until the phone turns off.

Add to Manifest.xml:

...
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WAKE_LOCK"></uses-permission>
...
<receiver  android:process=":remote" android:name="Alarm"></receiver>
...

Code:

    package YourPackage;
    import android.app.AlarmManager;
    import android.app.PendingIntent;
    import android.content.BroadcastReceiver;
    import android.content.Context;
    import android.content.Intent;
    import android.os.PowerManager;
    import android.widget.Toast;

    public class Alarm extends BroadcastReceiver 
    {    
         @Override
         public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) 
         {   
             PowerManager pm = (PowerManager) context.getSystemService(Context.POWER_SERVICE);
             PowerManager.WakeLock wl = pm.newWakeLock(PowerManager.PARTIAL_WAKE_LOCK, "");
             wl.acquire();

             // Put here YOUR code.
             Toast.makeText(context, "Alarm !!!!!!!!!!", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); // For example

             wl.release();
         }

     public void SetAlarm(Context context)
     {
         AlarmManager am=(AlarmManager)context.getSystemService(Context.ALARM_SERVICE);
         Intent i = new Intent(context, Alarm.class);
         PendingIntent pi = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(context, 0, i, 0);
         am.setRepeating(AlarmManager.RTC_WAKEUP, System.currentTimeMillis(), 1000 * 60 * 10, pi); // Millisec * Second * Minute
     }

     public void CancelAlarm(Context context)
     {
         Intent intent = new Intent(context, Alarm.class);
         PendingIntent sender = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(context, 0, intent, 0);
         AlarmManager alarmManager = (AlarmManager) context.getSystemService(Context.ALARM_SERVICE);
         alarmManager.cancel(sender);
     }
 }

Set Alarm from Service:

package YourPackage;
import android.app.Service;
import android.content.Context;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.IBinder;

public class YourService extends Service
{
    Alarm alarm = new Alarm();
    public void onCreate()
    {
        super.onCreate();       
    }

    public void onStart(Context context,Intent intent, int startId)
    {
        alarm.SetAlarm(context);
    }

    @Override
    public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) 
    {
        return null;
    }
}

If you want set alarm repeating at phone boot time:

Add permission to Manifest.xml:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED"></uses-permission>
...
<receiver android:name=".AutoStart">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED"></action>
    </intent-filter>
</receiver>
...

And create new class:

package YourPackage;
import android.content.BroadcastReceiver;
import android.content.Context;
import android.content.Intent;

public class AutoStart extends BroadcastReceiver
{   
    Alarm alarm = new Alarm();
    @Override
    public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent)
    {   
        if (intent.getAction().equals("android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED"))
        {
            alarm.SetAlarm(context);
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

For api levels below 19 you should use AlarmManager.setRepeating() and your alarms will trigger exactly at specified time. Thou on api levels 19 and above this will no longer work. There was change in android so that all repeating alarms are inexact. So if you would like to achieve exact repeating alarm you should schedule alarm with AlarmManager.setExact() and then when alarm triggers do it again for next week and so on every week.