Huawei – alarms and notifications

Source: Don’t kill my app

Explanation

UPDATE: On some phones with EMUI 9+ (Android P+) Huawei introduced a new task killer app called PowerGenie which kills everything not whitelisted by Huawei and does not give users any configuration options. See below how to uninstall it.

We have mixed reviews on Huawei – the PowerGenie app is present on some EMUI 9+ systems, while on others it isn’t.

Traditionally Huawei and their Android customization called EMUI belongs to the most troubled on the market with respect to non-standard background process limitations. There are no APIs and no documentation for those extensions. On default settings, background processing simply does not work right and apps working in background will break.

In some of the EMUI versions (we know about EMUI 4 at and we have some reports about EMUI 5 and now the latest EMUI 9) no user accessible settings can prevent the system to break background processing longer than 60 minutes. This is done by an evil custom service called HwPFWService (and in EMUI 9 this is called PowerGenie) developed and bundled with EMUI by Huawei.

Solution

App Launch on some EMUI 8, 9 and 10 devices (Huawei P20, Huawei P20 Lite, Huawei Mate 10…)
  • Phone settings > Battery > App launch and then set Circadian to “Manage manually” and make sure everything is turned on.

1. *Phone settings > Battery > App launch*. This feature may or may not be available for all devices or labeled differently.

2. Turn off “Manage all autmatically”

3. Make sure to ENABLE! all toggles.

EMUI 9+ devices

Classic battery optimization

Open Settings, and search for and access Battery optimization. Touch the little inverted triangle next to Don’t allow, touch All apps, locate and touch Circadian, and select Do allow.

PowerGenie

Huawei is extremely inventive in breaking apps on their devices. In addition to all the non-standard power management measures described below, they introduced a new task killer app build right into EMUI 9 on Android Pie.

It is called PowerGenie and it kills all apps that are not on its whitelist. You cannot add custom apps on their pre-defined whitelist. This means there is no other way to fix proper app functionality on Huawei than uninstalling PowerGenie.

Unfortunately this is a system app and can only be fully uninstalled using ADB (Android Debug Bridge) Source: XDA.

You need to:

1. install ADB on your computer

2. Connect your phone with a data cable

3. Enable

4. Developer optionsEnable USB debugging within Developer options on your device

5. Run the following commands on your computer: adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.huawei.powergenie adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.huawei.android.hwaps If apps keep getting killed try running adb shell pm stopservice hwPfwService. We did not yet have this confirmed but it is possible you can alternatively just disable PowerGenie in Phone settings > Apps. This setting would need to be re-applied every time you reboot your device.

Please still follow the steps below – Huawei phones usually have multiple powersaving mechanisms. Also, you may not have PowerGenie on your device, but your apps may still get killed by another mechanism.

EMUI 5.X and 8.X

Classic battery optimization

Open Settings, and search for and access Ignore battery optimization. Touch the little inverted triangle next to Allow, touch All apps, locate and touch the app, and select Allow.

EMUI 6+ devices (and some EMUI 5 devices)

  • Phone settings > Advanced Settings > Battery manager > Power plan set to Performance
  • Phone Settings > Advanced Settings > Battery Manager > Protected apps – set Circadian as Protected
  • Phone Settings > Apps > Circadian > Battery > Power-intensive prompt [uncheck] and Keep running after screen off [check]
  • Phone settings > Apps > Advanced (At the bottom) > Ignore optimisations > Press Allowed > All apps > Find Circadian on the list and set to Allow

Huawei P9 Plus

  • Phone settings > Apps > Settings > Special access > Ignore battery optimisation > select allow for Circadian.

Huawei Honor 9 Lite, Huawei Mate 9 Pro

  • Phone settings > Battery > Launch and then set your app to “Manage manually” and make sure everything is turned on. On EMUI 4 there is no way out, sorry.