pause

This is an event that fires when a Cordova application is put into the background.

document.addEventListener("pause", yourCallbackFunction, false);

Details

Cordova consists of two code bases: native and JavaScript. While the native code puts the application into the background the pause event is fired.

Typically, you will want to attach an event listener with document.addEventListener once you receive the Cordova 'deviceready' event.

Supported Platforms

  • Android
  • BlackBerry WebWorks (OS 5.0 and higher)
  • iOS
  • Windows Phone 7 and 8
  • Windows 8

Quick Example

document.addEventListener("pause", onPause, false);

function onPause() {
    // Handle the pause event
}

Full Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Cordova Pause Example</title>

    <script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="cordova-2.5.0.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">

    // Call onDeviceReady when Cordova is loaded.
    //
    // At this point, the document has loaded but cordova-2.5.0.js has not.
    // When Cordova is loaded and talking with the native device,
    // it will call the event `deviceready`.
    //
    function onLoad() {
        document.addEventListener("deviceready", onDeviceReady, false);
    }

    // Cordova is loaded and it is now safe to make calls Cordova methods
    //
    function onDeviceReady() {
	    document.addEventListener("pause", onPause, false);
    }

    // Handle the pause event
    //
    function onPause() {
    }

    </script>
  </head>
  <body onload="onLoad()">
  </body>
</html>

iOS Quirks

In the pause handler, any calls that go through Objective-C will not work, nor will any calls that are interactive, like alerts. This means that you cannot call console.log (and its variants), or any calls from Plugins or the Cordova API. These will only be processed when the app resumes (processed on the next run-loop).

  • resign event

    This iOS specific event is available as a variant of the pause event, and is often used to detect when the "Lock" button has been pressed to lock the device when your app is the foreground app. If your app (and device) is enabled for multi-tasking, this will be paired with a subsequent pause event, but only under iOS 5 (effectively all "locked" apps in iOS 5 that have multi-tasking enabled are put to the background).

    Under iOS 5, if you want your app to still run when the device is locked, you will have to disable multi-tasking (UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend - YES) for your app. This is different when you are on iOS 4 - to have your app run when the device is locked, the multi-tasking setting for your app does not matter.