[plugin] AirPlane Mode

[kodermike]

Hey there! I've put together a little plugin to mimic airplane mode in koreader. I rarely take koreader out of the house, but when I do it's a mad button dash to remember what all needs to be disabled so koreader doesn't lock up trying to reconnect to my home network. I tried to use the profiles plugin, but the use case didn't quite fit what profiles was designed for.

What It Does

Enabling AirPlane mode turns off wifi, sets all of the default wifi settings to their most conservative options (off, prompt, etc.), and disables plugins that use networking. There is a default list of plugins included by default, but there is also a menu that will let you browse all active plugins and mark them so they will disable while AirPlane is active. When you disable, network settings and plugin management should return to the previous, pre-AirPlane state.

Repository, tarball, and zip with the initial alpha can be found here: https://github.com/kodermike/airplanemode.koplugin

Tested with:
* the koreader emulator (of course)
* Kobo Clara
* Kobo Clara2E
* Kobo Forma
* Kobo Libra Color
* Kindle PW 2

I know it's a kobo heavy list, but it's what I had on hand while testing.

[PiperKev]

Stupid question, but how is this different than simply unchecking the "Wi-Fi connection" checkbox?

[Ebookus]

disable all automatic wifi settings, as well as a list of the standard plugins that use automatic networking.

I believe that means, if for example you synchronise progress, airplane mode won't bug you trying to turn wifi on when you now there is no wifi available.

[kodermike]

Originally Posted by Ebookus

I believe that means, if for example you synchronise progress, airplane mode won't bug you trying to turn wifi on when you now there is no wifi available.

Exactly! I have a pretty active progress sync for when I'm at home, because what's a little battery use before bed, but if you forget to disable all of the auto-enable, auto-connect settings before going out, it's literally a battle to disable progress sync and wifi in time. Connecting to wifi seems to be a particularly blocking process, since on my kobo's it locks up the whole experience waiting for a timeout. Then it tries again seconds later.

I wrote this plugin not only turns off wireless but sets everything to prompting, as well as disabling plugins that use wifi to avoid the request. In road testing, wikipedia tried to connect, but because of the disabled settings, was easily exited without trying to connect.

Writing up the initial post, I realized I should work on being able to specify which plugins you want disabled so you can disable other plugins that I don't know about (or didn't think about, like the hardcover plugin).

[PiperKev]

Gotcha! Thanks for the explanation!

[Billiam]

Originally Posted by kodermike

disable other plugins that I don't know about (or didn't think about, like the hardcover plugin).

I'll also be adding support for the airplanemode global setting to the hardcover plugin 👍

[kodermike]

Just a quick update - v.0.0.1 is up. Releases and instructions can be found in the usual place, i.e. https://github.com/kodermike/airplanemode.koplugin

This release adds the ability to manage which plugins are included as disabled while you're in AirPlane mode. Next up is to address a bug that seems to be Kindle specific, hopefully that will be fixed relatively soon. Let me know if you have any questions, thanks!

[Sofo]

Nice plugin! I came from reddit after you mentioned it on my post. Thanks so much for your work here!

[kodermike]

Originally Posted by Sofo

Nice plugin! I came from reddit after you mentioned it on my post. Thanks so much for your work here!

Thanks! I just posted a new release (minute ago) that fixes some issues I came across after brazenly releasing the last one last week. Mostly functional fixes, nothing too extra, although there is now gesture support for start/stop/toggle. Hopefully I will stop finding things I didn't do right the first or second time and be able to release a little less often

[hius07]

(Looking at the code)
Are the plugins settings saved when enabling the Airplane mode?
For example, create a new profile and enable the Airplane mode (with restart).
Was the new profile saved?

[kodermike]

FWIW, new update posted, mostly for quality of life type things - feedback when using gestures (there can be a delay reconnecting to networks; this way, you know your action started something; added a userpatch to put an airplane icon in your readerfooter if you want to see it in your status. Fix wise, I found a use case where shutting off SSH would mess with your networking because disabling the plugin doesn't turn off dropbear; also think I finally understand why kindle's have problems coming out of having wifi turned off.

Anyway, if you use the plugin, I encourage you to grab the update if you want the readerfooter patch or are on a kindle (or use ssh); otherwise I'll only encourage it if you didn't grab the last release, which had a bunch of bug fixes.