Why does

stateIn

need an initial value? I keep writing

.stateIn(…, …, initialValue = null).filterNotNull()

what would

StateFlow.value

return without an initial value?

Good point. I don’t care about that property but it’s there. I’ve always wondered why it isn’t a

suspend fun value()

instead.

Because state flow was designed for use cases, where default value is useful, such as UI state Also suspend value() is the same as existing suspend first()

So it was designed for a subset of potential use cases 😉 Anyway, I don’t think it will be changed anymore. So I have to work around it or make my own operator.

perhaps SharedFlow/.shareIn() would be a better fit for you

I think I’d then have to add

.conflate().distinctUntilChanged()

before each

.shareIn

to achieve the same behavior.

But MutableSharedFlow doing the same waht you need, isn’t it?