BackgroundGuard

A Flutter plugin for background task observability, diagnostics, and recovery — built for real production issues on Android and honest observability on iOS.

BackgroundGuard helps answer one critical question:

Did my background task actually run — or was it silently blocked by the OS?

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🚨 The Problem

Android

On modern Android devices (Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, etc.), background tasks often silently fail due to:

• OEM battery optimizations
• aggressive power-saving policies
• background execution limits
• vendor-specific task killers

Tasks appear scheduled, no errors are thrown, but execution never happens.

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iOS

iOS strictly controls background execution:

• no guaranteed execution
• no access to system background settings
• no way to force background behavior

BackgroundGuard does not overpromise on iOS.

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✅ What BackgroundGuard Does

Android (Production-ready)

BackgroundGuard provides a detect → diagnose → guide → verify workflow:

• Detects whether background work actually executed
• Tracks last attempt, last success, and last error
• Diagnoses OEM and battery restriction risks
• Guides users to relevant system settings
• Verifies fixes using real execution data

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iOS (Observability-only)

On iOS, BackgroundGuard provides a barebones probe focused on observability:

• Logs app lifecycle events
• Registers and attempts BGTaskScheduler tasks (best-effort)
• Records when background callbacks fire
• Exports logs for diagnostics and sharing

⚠️ iOS background execution is OS-controlled and not guaranteed.

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❌ What BackgroundGuard Does NOT Do

• Does not guarantee background execution
• Does not bypass OS restrictions
• Does not use private or undocumented APIs
• Does not risk App Store rejection
• Does not hide platform limitations

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📦 Installation

flutter pub add background_guard

Usage

Android

1. Initialize BackgroundGuard:

 await BackgroundGuard.init();

Run or schedule background heartbeat:

 await BackgroundGuard.runHeartbeatNow();

await BackgroundGuard.scheduleHeartbeat(
  periodicTimeInMinutes: 15,
);

2. Read background health:

final health = await BackgroundGuard.debugReadHealth();

3. Diagnose device restrictions:

final report = await BackgroundGuard.checkDevice();

4. Open a suggested fix action:

await BackgroundGuard.openFix(
  report.fixActions.first,
);

iOS (Probe)

1. Start the iOS observability probe:

await IosProbe.start();

2. Attempt to schedule a background refresh (best-effort):

await IosProbe.scheduleRefresh();

3. Export collected logs:

final logs = await IosProbe.exportLogs();

Scheduling may fail on simulator and is OS-controlled on real devices.

Testing Notes

• Android behavior varies heavily by OEM

• iOS background tasks may not fire immediately (or at all)

• Simulator behavior ≠ real device behavior (especially on iOS)

• Real-device logs are the most valuable datapoint.

📄 License

MIT