How to detect change in time each second in Android?

Question

I am creating a custom watch face for android by following this tutorial. I have implemented broadcast receiver to detect change in time as follows:

Inside my activity I have static block to filter following intents:

static {
    intentFilter = new IntentFilter();
    intentFilter.addAction(Intent.ACTION_TIME_CHANGED);
    intentFilter.addAction(Intent.ACTION_TIME_TICK);
    intentFilter.addAction(Intent.ACTION_TIMEZONE_CHANGED);
 }

My receiver class:

public class MyReciever extends BroadcastReceiver{

    @Override
    public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
        c = Calendar.getInstance();
        Log.d("myapp", "time changed");
        hrs = c.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY);
        min = c.get(Calendar.MINUTE);
        sec = c.get(Calendar.SECOND);

        txt_hrs.setText(String.valueOf(hrs));
        txt_mins.setText(String.valueOf(min));
        txt_sec.setText(String.valueOf(sec));
    }
}

And I have registered receiver inside oncreate():

 MyReciever myReciever = new MyReciever();
registerReceiver(myReciever,intentFilter);

Above code works fine for hours and minutes, but doesn't work for seconds.

the problem with Intent.ACTION_TIME_TICK is that it is broadcasted each minute, not second.

I need to detect change in time each second for the clock on watchface. Anyone have any solution for 'detecting time change per second'?

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 21 '22 at 09:54

You may look why you are not getting intent after every seconds. So better is to create a separate thread or use asynctask where you need to update your textview on each one seconds.

Or you can use Timer and TimerTask for such purpose, like below

public void updateTimeOnEachSecond() {
    Timer timer = new Timer();
    timer.schedule(new TimerTask() {

        @Override
        public void run() {
            c = Calendar.getInstance();
            Log.d("myapp", "time changed");
            hrs = c.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY);
            min = c.get(Calendar.MINUTE);
            sec = c.get(Calendar.SECOND);

            runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
                @Override
                public void run() {
                    txt_hrs.setText(String.valueOf(hrs));
                    txt_mins.setText(String.valueOf(min));
                    txt_sec.setText(String.valueOf(sec));
                }
            });

        }
    }, 0, 1000);

}

And call this method after initialising each view from activity.

it works but there is a minor change in your code. You should put setText methods inside runOnUiThread, otherwise it will throw CalledFromWrongThreadException: Only the original thread that created a view hierarchy can touch its views. I have edited the code.please approve that edit. — Krupal Shah, Mar 04 '15 at 07:01
@Krupal Hey thanks for that. Yes I missed that. :) Keep it up... do updating — Pankaj Kumar, Mar 04 '15 at 07:10

How to detect change in time each second in Android?

1 Answers1