App pausing - how can I do it?

[Qbi Wan]

Hi. In Android 16 I can pause app. How can I achieve it in Automate? Any suggestions? Walk arounds?

[Mahammad Rafi]

Use "app in foreground" block

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

It depends on what you by "pause"?

• To move an app to the background, use the Interact block with action Home, or App start block with action Main and category Home.
• To suspend an app, use the Shell command privileged block to execute pm suspend <app package>. Ensure to also setup an "Privileged service start method" in settings.

[Qbi Wan]

I mean this ⬆️

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

I can't find any official way to "pause".

The latter point given it the previous reply seems to work in a similar way, but it can then only be unpaused but a shell command, not by clicking the gray/disabled app icon!

[мJ ZЖУ]

App timer feature maybe he's asking if Automate can be used with App Wellbeing or not?

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

There's no public API for that.

[Qbi Wan]

Wait, so pause function is part of Digital Wellbeing / Screen Time API? That's nuts XD 

So there's no chance for it to be implemented in near future? It depends on integration from Google's side?

[мJ ZЖУ]

It soft pause the app momentarily. Prevent other person running it with lock.

You can also use System set block to approach that but it seem less simple.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

As said, use the Shell command privileged block to execute pm suspend <app package>, there's no API for regular apps to use.