Disable auto-upload by default

[smichel17]

Use case

I was planning on discussing this eventually anyway, but it's also timely now: in #3466 (comment), @westnordost wrote,

Now, one can argue that the precise/coarse location of the user can be determined by

• his current contribution history (especially if he has auto-sync on)

• When we used overpass, auto-upload was very important, because some quests (house number) would not appear until after a pre-requisite quest (building type) had been uploaded. However, with offline data storage, this is no longer a requirement. Actually, it's the other way: some functionality is only available when auto-upload is off (undo of certain actions, like leaving notes).
• Auto-upload has a large impact on battery usage (Adapt app behavior when power saving mode is enabled #3251).
• And it's probably the biggest privacy concern in the app.

Proposed Solution: Change the default setting to upload on wifi only.

Risks: Some people may not realize they need to upload now.

Maybe there could be a prompt, similar to when you are not logged in yet, if you reach a certain number of changes waiting to be uploaded or if you have changes which are older than a certain age. It would tell (or require?) the user to upload, and let them know about the auto-upload setting (with a warning about battery usage).

[Cj-Malone]

I don't know if this is expected behaviour, or a bug but I can only upload when the screen is on, when the screen goes off the upload stops until I unlock the phone (and have SC open?). If this is expected behaviour I'd argue for auto upload to remain the default, it's not a great experience.

[kmpoppe]

I was under the impression that this was fixed in one of the more recent releases. Are you working with v37?

[Cj-Malone]

Looking at the changesets that I last noticed it on it was 36.0. I'll check it out next time, hopefully it's sorted.

[Cj-Malone]

I've just done a survey with StreetComplete 37.0, and it did upload with the screen turned off. Thanks to everyone who made that happen.

As a side note, I saw quests split into multiple changesets which wasn't what I expected. For example "Add housenumbers" was 113733349, 113736756, 113739356, 113740188, 113741067, 113741784 and 113742966.

I pressed upload around 1450, and didn't turn the screen back on until around 1950. It's not really an issue for me, but I though it was worth documenting.

[matkoniecz]

Risks: Some people may not realize they need to upload now.

Also, it would be more annoying to edit both with SC and other editor like Vespucci at the same time.

[riQQ]

But people who would be using Vespucci and SC are advanced users and pretty likely will check out the options imo.

[matkoniecz]

1. SC is directed also to newbies

2. people here are extreme (and welcome and positive) outliers, there are thousands of users who never commented on GitHub

3. most of users never change any settings

4. it could be interesting to review edits and see how many people ever solved quest not enabled by default (other settings have effects that are not exposed)

[riQQ]

As already aluded to by smichel17: There has to be a prompt or something similar to ask the user if they want to turn on auto upload or if they prefer to do it manually. It's probably the best to show it after solving the first or the first 10 (or another sensible number) quests.

[mnalis]

it could be interesting to review edits and see how many people ever solved quest not enabled by default (other settings have effects that are not exposed)

Unless my counting is wrong; if we ignore AddRoofShape (which has just recently become non-default) , about 12258 out of 38807 SC users seems to have solved at least one non-default quest - that would be about 32% of them, which sounds way too much.
When I also remove AddMaxSpeed (which might have been default before? I don't know...) I get much more reasonable 4509, which is more realistic 12%; but it could be even lower if some of the quests below have been enabled by default before... (let me know and I can recalculate).

% pbzip2 -dc changesets-211018.osm.bz2 | env -i LC_ALL=C fgrep -B1 'StreetComplete:quest_type'  | perl -nE '$u=$1 if /uid="(\d+)"/; say "$1\t$u" if /StreetComplete:quest_type" v="(.*?)"/' >  changesets_sc.txt

% sort -u changesets_sc.txt| cut -f2 | sort -u | wc -l
38807

% sort -u changesets_sc.txt | egrep -w 'AddBabyChangingTable|AddWheelchairAccessToiletsPart|AddAcceptsCash|AddVegetarian|AddVegan|AddHalal|AddKosher|AddWheelchairAccessBusiness|AddInternetAccess|AddMaxSpeed' | cut -f2 | sort -u | wc -l
12258

[smichel17]

AddMaxSpeed has been default-enabled in the past. I don't know about the others.

[mnalis]

For me, the biggest concern is whether new users would know they need to upload when they get to wifi. Even as an advanced user, I sometimes forget, as unless SC was the foreground app when I got home, auto-upload on wifi is equivalent to off. Sure, I'll remember in next day or two when I open SC again, but new user might not open it for some time (or never, if they don't see changes on osm.org they might decide SC is not working)...

Still, there are quite a few benefits, so I'm slightly more inclined to think that changing default is a good idea.

[smichel17]

Even as an advanced user, I sometimes forget, as unless SC was the foreground app when I got home, auto-upload on wifi is equivalent to off

I agree this is the biggest concern; I also forget. I think a pre-requisite for mkaing this change would be showing a notification when you're back on wifi, like #1538 (comment)

[mnalis]

Implementing that could be somewhat problematic, though, requiring that the app remains active in the background and do checks...

Which would likely be problematic - at least with other background apps that really do require such periodic background checks (like DAVx5 for contacts/calendar sync for example), one needs to jump through many hoops, which is very unlikely most users will do (see https://dontkillmyapp.com/ for examples of workarounds one has to do to have any chance of periodic background checks working). And its getting worse and worse with every new android version 😢

[smichel17]

As the primary maintainer of one such app through the time when Android was starting to implement these restrictions, I am very familiar with them. I have spent an unreasonable amount of time poring over the docs for AlarmManager and related topics to figure out the best way to work around them, while still trying not to cause unnecessary battery drain (by the way, as a benevolent developer, this is by far the most frustrating part— that it is so complicated to do the best thing for users, while keeping your app working; it's so much easier to just setAlarmClock and be done with it.)

Anyway, StreetComplete is quite different, for three reasons:

1. The kind of app which is punished most harshly by Android's restrictions is one which runs near-exclusively in the background. At the time when I looked into it, if the user hadn't opened the app in the last 3 days, Android would stop delivering alarms at all (unless the user jumps through the hoops to exempt the app). The alert I proposed would only happen shortly (~24h or less) after using StreetComplete.

2. The second behavior which Android makes difficult is setting alerts which must happen at a specific time (and thus, may take the device out of a low-power state). Fortunately, StreetComplete doesn't care exactly when the alert happens. Actually, we'd rather have it happen when the user is actively using the device, so it's not missed. So, we can set generous parameters for when the alarm fires; the restrictions here don't really matter.

3. At least one of SC's alerts is in response to some other trigger (getting back on wifi), rather than being arbitrarily-scheduled. These have a different set of restrictions, which I am not as familiar with. I think (1) applies but not (2).

[riQQ]

You could also introduce a new user to this mechanism after they solve the first or the first 10 (or another sensible number) quests. Show a dialog and ask them if they want to turn auto upload on or if they want to do it manually by pushing the upload changes button.

[smichel17]

There has to be a prompt or something similar to ask the user if they want to turn on auto upload or if they prefer to do it manually. It's probably the best to show it after solving the first or the first 10 (or another sensible number) quests.

@riQQ Note that such a mechanism already exists: the app prompts you to log in to OSM after some low number of changes (I think 3).

[riQQ]

So this is perfect to add the question / hint for auto upload / manual upload.

[FloEdelmann]

And it's probably the biggest privacy concern in the app.

Disabling auto-upload (by default) might mitigate the problem described in #3507.

[timothywashere]

Slightly off topic but please bring back the option to turn off auto-download when using the app.
I have mobile data turned off and regularly get error messages as it keep trying to download quests. The error message appears on top of the quest dialog, so hard to ignore.

[matkoniecz]

That is quit weird and maybe a bug. With mobile data turned off it should not try to download anything.

Though it can be a bug in Android/phone OS.

Have you disable mobile data with phone-wide setting?

[timothywashere]

Yeah, I use the setting from the pull down menu although it's harder to get to since Android 12. Just turn the 4G toggle off and on when I need it.
Does SC cache the setting? IE if mobile data is on when I launch the app it keeps on checking?

[matkoniecz]

For me when I disable mobile data it shows error once (in case where some action was in progress) and is not pestering me with messages about failed attempts.

If mobile data is enabled but not working then I get repeated errors.

[Helium314]

Looks like Android is not telling the truth when checking connection using connectivityManager.activeNetworkInfo.