JavaScript Wake Lock API
An enjoyable web apps rely on engineers implementing the APIs that cover all of the small things. Those small things sometimes improve performance, usability, accessibility, and the app's relationship with its host system. The Wake Lock API is the latter -- an API that allows developers to instruct the host machine to not dim the screen or sleep, especially useful when users view videos.
To prevent the screen from dimming or sleeping, request permission to the screen:
let lock
try {
lock = await navigator.wakeLock.request('screen');
} catch (err) {
// Error or rejection
console.log('Wake Lock error: ', err);
}
If the request is successful, the host machine doesn't sleep until released:
await lock.release()
I first saw this API implemented and utilized on mobile devices, and I'm happy to start seeing it utilized on desktop. There are a few big name streaming services that I've noticed could desperately use the Wake Lock API -- system sleep during videos ruins the experience!
Today we get to play amazing games on our super powered game consoles, PCs, VR headsets, and even mobile devices. While I enjoy playing new games these days, I do long for the retro gaming systems I had when I was a kid: the original Nintendo...
Your early CSS books were instrumental in pushing my love for front end technologies. What was it about CSS that you fell in love with and drove you to write about it?
At first blush, it was the simplicity of it as compared to the table-and-spacer...
Feature detection via JavaScript is a client side best practice and for all the right reasons, but unfortunately that same functionality hasn't been available within CSS. What we end up doing is repeating the same properties multiple times with each browser prefix. Yuck. Another thing we...
Missing images on your website can make you or your business look completely amateur.
Unfortunately sometimes an image gets deleted or corrupted without your knowledge.
You'd agree with me that IE's default "red x" icon looks awful, so why not use
your own missing image graphic?
The MooTools JavaScript
Note that...
Really nice to see that this is becoming somewhat supported. I remember trying to use NoSleep.js (https://github.com/richtr/NoSleep.js) to hack this functionality in to a personal project.
Great article thanks !
I use the Wake Lock API too for a personal recipe app this is really usefull when cooking
I’ve open sourced a react module https://github.com/jorisre/react-screen-wake-lock