Locale 4.0

Locale® 4.0 is now available exclusively on Google Play. With over 100 enhancements throughout the app, Locale 4.0 focuses on being more helpful and more efficient. Specific enhancements include:

Power-Zero Location

Locale 4.0 has amazing new patent-pending power management technologies:

First up is Power-Zero (P0). P0 passively monitors various sensors and radios to detect when the device isn’t moving, allowing Locale to sleep for extended periods of time without using any battery power at all. Next, Locale 4.0 is supercharged with an “oracle” that uses a priori knowledge of your Location conditions to manage different location sources, providing up to 10x better efficiency. Finally, every aspect of Locale has been tuned for the best performance on the latest Android devices, such as optimizations for barometers and more efficient use of 4G networks.

Location calibration

While Locale is incredibly accurate out of the box, thanks to our cloud-based location infrastructure, the new Calibration feature lets you pinpoint your position even more precisely.

Optimized for Android Jellybean

Locale 4.0 has been optimized to take advantage of the latest features in Android 4.2 Jellybean. For example, Locale’s ongoing notification no longer appears at the top of the screen on Android 4.2 Jellybean, although it still appears in the pulldown area.

VIP Callers

Are you always missing important calls because your ringer was off? Locale can let VIP callers always ring though with the new “VIP calling” situation template that automatically configures itself for starred or frequently contacted people.

In addition, Locale 4.0 contains a workaround for firmware bugs in certain Samsung and HTC handsets that previously interfered with VIP caller situations. On these devices, the workaround requires that the VIP caller situation be the highest priority situation and contain only Caller conditions and a Volume setting.

Streamlined Intuitive UI

We’ve streamlined every corner of Locale 4.0 to be more efficient and more powerful than ever. Locale makes contextual suggestions to help you get the most out of the app. Rather than show too much information at once, Locale only shows information when it is most pertinent.

Multiple Conditions (OR Operator)

It is now possible to add multiple conditions of the same type in a situation. Multiple conditions of the same type are treated as OR (Location OR Location). Multiple conditions of different types are treated as AND (Location AND Time). This makes sense because while it is physically impossible to be in two places simultaneously, it is possible to be at a particular place at a particular time.

Enhanced backup and restore

Locale now automatically stores a situation backup on external storage that can be restored in one step. There are no buttons or options to mess with—it just works!

Countless other improvements

  • New Charger condition and simplified Battery condition

  • Improved app-wide performance

  • Searching for addresses is more accurate and now works on non-maps devices

  • UI improvements on Motorola devices

  • Improved Wi-Fi management

  • Improved location detection on tablets

  • Improved handling of multiple Shortcut settings

Locale 3.0.2

Locale 3.0.2 is a minor compatibility update for Android 4.0 only. For devices running Android 2.2 through Android 3.2, Locale 3.0.1 is the most recent version.

  • Improved compatibility with selecting specific calendars
  • Improved compatibility with HTC One devices
  • Locale’s on/off button now works when slid

Locale 3.0

Locale 3.0 introduces the Calendar condition, improved battery life and compatibility, and UI enhancements to make Locale faster and easier to set up.

Calendar condition

The number one Locale feature request is finally here! Locale 3.0 introduces the Calendar condition to detect events on your Google Calendar, Exchange Calendar, or any other calendar supported by Android. Use the Calendar condition to silence your ringer automatically during meetings. The Calendar condition requires Android 4.0 or later.

New UI theme

Locale 3.0 introduces a new UI theme consistent with Google’s new Android UI guidelines. Sleeker than ever, Locale’s lists fit better on the screen, UI elements are better spaced, and situation prioritization is more seamless.

New situation status indicators give better insight into what Locale is doing. Tap on the indicators to get more detailed status and the ability to turn situations on and off.

Situation templates

Pre-configured situation templates make it possible to instantly add new situations.

Location improvements

  • “My” locations: When setting up a new Location condition, Locale automatically finds locations like “home” or “work” in your “me” card in the Android 4.0 contact list
  • Improved usability: The location radius now is set to match available accuracy
  • More accurate autocomplete: When searching by address, autocomplete now prioritizes addresses in the contact list
  • Longer battery life: New power management algorithms are up to 10x more efficient
  • Reduced storage: For devices with limited internal memory, Locale automatically switches to cache location data on external storage

Intelligent Bluetooth management

If a Bluetooth headset is in use when a Bluetooth off setting is applied, Locale intelligently delays toggling Bluetooth until the call ends.

Priority support

A new “Contact support” menu item automatically attaches Locale configuration information, so that our legendary lightning-fast support team can respond to inquiries even more quickly.

Google TV

Locale is now fully compatible with Google TV devices. If you’re doing something interesting with Locale on your TV, please let us know!

Improved compatibility

All of the enhancements in Locale 2.5–Shortcut setting, Media Volume setting, instant Orientation condition detection–are now available to Android 2.2 and Android 2.3 users.

Locale 3.0 contains workarounds for erratic Wi-Fi behavior on HTC phones, caused by HTC’s “battery saver” app.

Permissions

The new features in Locale 3.0 require some additional Android permissions. The Calendar condition requires READ CALENDAR EVENTS in order to detect when you’re in a meeting. The Location condition requires READ PROFILE in order to figure out locations important to you like home and work. This information is only used within the app; it is not transmitted and stored.

The Location condition also requires MODIFY/DELETE USB STORAGE CONTENTS MODIFY/DELETE SD CARD CONTENTS in order to more intelligently cache location data.

Locale 2.5

Locale 2.5 introduces a new UI, new built-in settings, enhanced performance, and focuses on improved compatibility with the latest versions of Android. Locale 2.5 is only available for Android 3.0 or later at this time, although a future version of Locale will bring these enhancements to Android 2.2 and Android 2.3.

Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) compatibility

Locale 2.5 has full support for Android 4.0, including the Holographic UI, ActionBar, new menu and notification icons, and overall improved compatibility for the following issues:

  • Workaround for the Battery condition disappearing on the Galaxy Nexus (Android bug #22035)
  • Workaround for Locale’s ongoing notification disappearing when manually stopping and starting Locale’s service (Android bug #21635)
  • Workaround for issues with Location on certain tablets (Android bug #22036)
  • Workaround for Location condition sometimes disappearing (Android bug #24656)
  • Workaround for issues with setting ringer and notification volumes (Android bug #23284 and Android bug #23283). Note: Unlike older versions of Android, Android 4.0 does not allow ringer and notification volumes to be set independently. To mute the ringer and still get audible notifications, use the Ringtone setting to set the ringtone to silent and the Volume setting to set the volume to loud
  • Improved Location UI search
  • Fixed an “application is not responding” error that sometimes occurred when tapping Locale’s ongoing notification
  • Locale now uses 50% less RAM memory on Android 4.0

Holographic UI

Locale’s futuristic new UI streamlines setup with fewer taps, while adding new features making Locale easier to use. A new non-maps Location UI improves compatibility with devices that don’t support touch screens or Google Maps. In addition, improved situation status indicators now show if there’s an error inside of a situation (such as a missing plug-in).

Shortcut setting

Automate your Android with the new Shortcut setting which launches apps and app shortcuts. Imagine: automatically load the weather in the morning. Start an app when connecting the charger. Launch your music when connecting headphones (when combined with the Headphones Plug-in). The possibilities are endless!

Media Volume setting

Media Volume controls are now built-in. In addition to silencing the ringer in class, don’t forget to turn down the media volume so that your games don’t start blasting out at full volume!

Instant orientation change detection

New Orientation condition algorithms are significantly more accurate, battery efficient, and detect changes almost immediately even when the display is off.

Better location detection

New battery efficient algorithms enhance detection, especially when driving. In addition, new location cache management reduces network bandwidth and uses less storage.

Self-repairing database

Locale automatically detects and repairs database corruption caused by defective flash memory in Android devices, a major Android issue.

Plug-in API

Updated plug-in sample code is available now, with UI enhancements for Android 4.0, improved forward compatibility, and up to 3x reduced memory usage.

Locale 2.0.4

  • Improved location detection on CDMA networks
  • Improved Wi-Fi management when Airplane mode or Wi-Fi Tethering are enabled
  • Battery life improvements
  • 3x more efficient network bandwidth usage
  • Improved Ringtone setting reliability and support for the Silent ringtone
  • Fixed a bug where the situation list would sometimes not display active situations in bold text, even though they were actually active

Locale 2.0.3

  • Location improvements
  • Faster UI performance
  • Improved compatibility with HTC devices when Fast Boot is enabled
  • Improved compatibility with custom ROMs with strange screen resolutions
  • Improved location detection on CDMA networks
  • UI improvements for Android 4.0

Locale 2.0.2

Locale 2.0.2 addresses device-specific compatibility issues, including:

  • Workaround for a Samsung bug on the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II that caused the Bluetooth setting to fail. This fix requires adding an additional Bluetooth permission to Locale.
  • Workaround for a Samsung bug on the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II that caused the Ringtone setting to fail.
  • Workaround for some devices that report a battery level above 100%.
  • Workaround for a Motorola bug that prevented wallpapers from saving on the Atrix and Droid Bionic.

Locale 2.0

Locale 2.0 is now available exclusively on the Android Market. With over 100 enhancements, Locale 2.0 is faster, smarter, and maybe a bit telepathic. Thanks to instant location, Google Places integration, and more, Locale gets out of your way and just works. The most exciting changes include:

Instant location

The wait is over. Locale 2.0 instantly detects location arrival. We call this groundbreaking new feature “instant location.” As soon as you arrive at work–BOOM!–instantly your ringer silences, your wallpaper snaps to that scenic Caribbean photo, and Wi-Fi switches on. So how does it work? Locale 2.0’s artificial intelligence analyzes current and historical location data to detect when you’re moving and predict where you’re going.

Instant location is up to 10x more battery efficient and 5x more accurate. How is this possible? First, Locale intelligently checks location based on when you’ll arrive, rather than periodically polling for location. Second, instant location is intelligent about using GPS only when it might be available. Locale takes a hybrid approach that combines accelerometer, cell, Wi-Fi, GPS, and other readings for accurate and low power location coverage, regardless of whether you’re indoors or outdoors (GPS is only available outdoors because GPS signals are blocked by buildings).

Blazing fast performance

Multi-threaded and hardware accelerated, Locale takes full advantage of the latest Android devices and multicore processors.

Every aspect of Locale has been optimized. The app uses up to 50% less RAM memory, and editing situations is up to 4x faster thanks to a new situation storage system. The Location UI now instantly snaps the map to the correct zoom level, and the Screen Timeout setting now takes effect immediately. The Orientation condition uses 67% less battery power, and backups take up 60% less disk space, along with dozens of other optimizations.

Google Places integration

Locale 2.0 integrates with Google Places to autocomplete searches in the Location condition UI.

Honeycomb support

Locale 2.0 has full support for Honeycomb, including the Holographic UI, ActionBar, new menu and notification icons, improved Wallpaper setting image quality, and better Volume setting controls for tablets.

Plug-in quality

There are now over 250 Locale plug-ins on the Android Market. To continue this exciting growth, we’ve focused on improving the quality, reliability, and consistency of third party plug-ins. Updated plug-in sample code is available now, featuring extensive unit tests, Honeycomb support, and significant performance improvements.

Security

Locale 2.0 is the most reliable and secure version yet. New dynamic permission controls allow Locale 2.0 to request 22% fewer permissions at installation time, while new signature-based permissions further secure Locale’s data.

Internationalization

Locale 2.0 now supports 14 different languages: Czech (cs), English (en), German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Italian (it), Japanese (jp), Korean (ko), Norwegian (nb), Dutch (nl), Brazilian Portuguese (pt-rBR), Russian (ru), Swedish (sv), and Vietnamese (vi). In addition, Locale 2.0 contains a number of improvements for international users, including improved alphabetization of Conditions and Settings with accented characters.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed selecting contact groups in the Contact condition by converting groups into multiple individual Contact conditions
  • Fixed bug where a contact might not be re-selected when editing a Contact condition, especially after a backup/restore between devices
  • Fixed a very rare bug where it was possible to start editing two different plug-ins simultaneously
  • Fixed UI on devices with non-standard color schemes
  • Improved filtering of ad hoc networks in Location Training
  • The Add Condition and Add Setting dialogs now immediately detect when new plug-in conditions and settings are installed
  • Developers: Fixed a bug where ACTION_EDIT_SETTING was set as the Intent action when editing Conditions
  • Developers: Fixed a bug where a change to a plug-in’s BroadcastReceiver class name wouldn’t be detected until Locale’s process restarted
  • Developers: Fixed a bug where plug-ins on external memory were allowed
  • Developers: Fixed a bug where plug-ins without an Activity icon were allowed
  • Developers: Fixed a bug where null keys were not supported in EXTRA_BUNDLE

Locale 2.0 requires Android 2.2 or later.

Locale 1.6

  • Location improvements
    • 10% better location accuracy
    • Battery life improvements
    • New accelerometer-based location algorithms
    • 2x better cell location coverage on CDMA networks, such as Sprint and Verizon
    • Reduced network bandwidth usage
    • Fixed very rare bug caused by malformed Wi-Fi MAC addresses on Droid X
    • Significantly improved performance and battery life while roaming
  • Plug-in icon badging, making it easier to differentiate between built-in and plug-in functionality when editing situations
  • When editing an old Ringtone setting, the previously chosen Ringtone is now reselected
  • Fixed a bug where the Ringtone setting could pick an empty ringtone

Locale 1.5.2

  • Improved cell location accuracy estimates, especially when Wi-Fi access points are present
  • Improved Orientation condition algorithms
  • Fixed rare bug triggered by loss of cell signal

Locale 1.5

  • Location condition improvements
    • 25% improvement in detecting Location conditions
    • Improved support for devices without Google Maps libraries installed
    • Improved drag-and-drop of the pin on the map
    • Improved compatibility with airplane mode
    • Fixed a crash due to bad map search results from the server
    • Improved screen timeout handling
    • Improved handing of screen rotations
  • Optimized for Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), including a streamlined new notification icon
  • Preliminary support for Android 3.0 (Honeycomb)
  • New menu icons
  • Multithreaded UI, yielding up to 2x faster UI performance
  • New Orientation condition algorithms, which work around HTC’s cosmetic bug in the battery statistics
  • Several minor translation improvements
  • Wallpaper setting UI improvements
  • Fixed a crash if a plug-in requested a requery at the exact same moment a situation was being saved
  • Fixed a rare crash caused by proxy servers, especially on public Wi-Fi networks

Locale 1.4

  • New automatic cloud-based backup/restore of situations for devices running Android 2.2 or later supporting Android’s BackupManager.  There are no user interface options within Locale for this feature, as backup and restore is performed automatically
  • Location improvements
    • 20% faster detection of location changes. Locale now detects location changes within an average of 4 minutes
    • Battery usage reduced by up to 50%
    • Improved compatibility with Android 2.2’s Wi-Fi Tethering
    • Location Training UI improvements
    • Improved conversion of latitude, longitude names into actual street names
    • Fixed a rare bug where the map could get stuck zooming
  • Improved performance when launching the app
  • New Korean localization and updated Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Czech, and Japanese localizations
  • Improved compatibility with the Motorola Charm
  • UI improvements to the Wallpaper Setting
  • Security improvements
  • Fixed a bug where upgrading from Locale 1.0.9 or earlier to Locale 1.2 or later (skipping the Locale 1.1.x series) could corrupt Locale’s database
  • Developer Platform Improvements
    • Improved platform API compliance: Locale 1.4 supports a strict API compliance mode, to help developers verify plug-ins will work correctly with different hosts
    • The ACTION_HELP Intent has been deprecated in favor of Android’s ACTION_VIEW Intent which simply launches the web browser
    • The ACTION_START_LOCALE Intent has been deprecated in favor of Android’s PackageManager.getLaunchIntentForPackage() method.
    • RESULT_REMOVE has been deprecated. As of Locale 1.4, it will behave as RESULT_CANCELED

Locale 1.3

  • New dynamic feature scaling, which allows for support for non-phone devices with different hardware capabilities, such as Android tablets and upcoming Android TVs
  • Security and Data Integrity Improvements
    • Improved reclamation of storage space when deleting situations
    • Locale now hides plug-ins that have known security problems
    • Fixed a bug where plug-ins returning private Serializable objects unavailable to Locale’s classloader could crash Locale
    • Fixed a bug where plug-in conditions could crash Locale by providing no Activity class in the ACTION_REQUEST_QUERY Intent
    • Fixed a bug with plug-in namespace collisions
  • UI improvements
    • Significantly improved drag-and-drop re-prioritization of situations
    • Intelligent situation saving: If a situation is opened for editing, no changes are made, and then the situation is saved, Locale’s background service no longer re-triggers situation settings
    • Improved performance when editing situations
    • Redesigned delete buttons, which integrate better with the various and inconsistently customized UIs appearing on HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola handsets
    • The Volume setting UI is now fully navigable by trackball
    • Time Condition UI has better handling of 12/24 hour time format switches while the UI is running
    • Location condition now displays a latitude, longitude coordinate while looking up the street name. Previous versions displayed “unknown,” which caused user confusion
    • The Edit Situation screen updates dynamically as plug-ins are installed or uninstalled in the background
    • The Edit Situation screen offers to install missing plug-ins for Android 2.2 and later
    • The Edit Situation screen displays a dialog about plug-ins which duplicate functionality built-in to Locale and provides additional troubleshooting tips for Locale’s built-in functionality
    • Fixed a bug where the Android back button wouldn’t always return to Locale after choosing the “Get Plug-ins” menu item
    • Improved software update notifications
    • New icon for the “View” menu item
    • Improved performance in the Location condition UI, especially with screen rotations
    • Improved performance in the Wallpaper setting UI, especially with screen rotations
    • Updated French, German, Dutch, and Vietnamese localizations
  • Improved accuracy of locations trained with Wi-Fi Location Training
  • Improved timeouts for Wi-Fi location scans, providing a workaround for firmware flaws in Samsung Galaxy S handsets
  • Workaround for a crash caused by corrupted Google Maps data on the Samsung Galaxy S

Locale 1.2.1

  • Workaround for an Android Market bug that prevented Locale from being visible to Android 1.5/1.6 devices
  • Workaround for an HTC security bug in the Hero running Android 2.1, which prevented Locale from freeing up certain resources. The underlying security flaw has been reported to HTC
  • Bug fix for Orientation condition UI under Android 1.5
  • Minor fix for cell tower based locations

Locale 1.2

  • Location condition improvements
    • New Wi-Fi location training feature available under the Menu of the Location condition. Use only if you’re getting incorrect location results
    • New artificial intelligence algorithms for location detection, improving speed, accuracy, and battery usage
    • Location accuracy improvements
    • During periodic Wi-Fi scans, association with known access points will no longer occur. In earlier versions, such association could cause brief disruption of Internet connectivity
  • Android 2.2 (Froyo) Improvements
    • Improved compatibility with Android 2.2’s Wi-Fi tethering feature
    • Bug fix for weird location data under Android 2.2
  • UI enhancements
    • New Launcher icon for Android 2.0
    • New Notification icon
    • Improved trackball support on the Home and Edit Situation screens
    • Added a note to the Orientation condition UI regarding incorrect battery usage reporting on certain HTC phones
    • Missing plug-ins are now shown in the Edit Situation screen
  • Orientation Condition accuracy improvements
  • Workarounds for Wi-Fi bugs on the HTC Desire
  • Localizations
    • Japanese localization
    • Vietnamese localization
    • Updated Dutch localization
    • Updated French localization
    • Updated German localization