New Architecture
Locale's most important job is to be practically invisible while working reliably in the background. Locale X has a powerful new system architecture to do just that. This new architecture is hardened with isolation between components to optimize memory usage, improve performance, and maximize reliability.
The UI and background service now run in different processes, which reduces memory usage up to 90% when the app is running in the background. Conditions and Settings have firewalls between them, creating isolation for high reliability. In addition, each Condition and Setting supports hyper-parallelism which helps distribute work across multiple CPU cores. This also allows Locale X to continuously monitor and optimize CPU and power usage. With all this isolation, we designed a new scheduler that allows Locale X to update contextual data more quickly, while improving battery life.
Locale keeps an on-device memory of recent contextual data, called the Context Continuum, which helps the background service resume where it left off and reduces the number of times it fires settings that are already fired. For example, when adding a new situation, settings in other pre-existing situations will not be re-fired. In addition, settings from previously active situations will not be re-fired after updating the app or rebooting.
Finally, the app has a new download format which is optimized for size to save you bandwidth and precious space on your Android device.
Easy to Use
In addition to being more powerful, Locale X is easier to use. A new User Manual provides step-by-step instructions on how to get started with the app, as well as tips and common troubleshooting steps.
New inline tips throughout the app dynamically help to get the most out of Locale. A few examples include suggested Defaults based on already configured settings, suggestions to disable “battery savers” based on device and Android version, suggested calibration based on current location accuracy.
We’ve also improved Priority Support, enabling us to more quickly answer questions.
Internationalization
Locale X fully translated in 14 different languages, to better support our users across the world. The app is available in English, Japanese, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Czech.
Hardened Security
Locale has always been secure and in Locale X we've made a number of advancements to harden the app further. The app now uses larger cryptographic keys, double-encrypts location downloads, and has additional integrity checks and cloud-based security monitoring for a more secure experience.
Plug-in API 2.0 Beta
Thousands of plug-ins have contributed to the Locale ecosystem. Today we're announcing an upcoming beta of a new plug-in API that makes plug-ins faster, more robust, and more secure while also supporting backwards and forwards compatibility.
The new plug-in API is already built-in to Locale X, and the documentation for plug-in developers will be made available in the coming weeks.
What’s Next
We welcome your constructive feedback during the Locale X public beta, as this is how we’re able to continue improving the app.
Please send us an email using Locale’s Priority Support feature under the Hamburger menu. (We don’t recommend leaving reviews on Google Play, because our reply is limited to Tweet length which is too short to troubleshoot anything).
In addition to improvements based on feedback, we have many great enhancements planned for Locale X.
We maintain a page of known issues that we are actively tracking during the beta period.