Also, is there a recommended way to load a bunch o...

# glance

[andrew]

Also, is there a recommended way to load a bunch of images remotely in a lazy column?

[Marcel Pinto]

it’s a bit tricky. Ideally you would pre-load them, store in cache and get the URI. Now, you have to make sure the URI provides read access or that the files are accessible otherwise 3rd party launchers won’t be able to display them.
https://developer.android.com/training/secure-file-sharing

To load the images, better use a WorkManager and once loaded, just update the widget

[andrew]

Are there any plans to make this simpler?

[Marcel Pinto]

unfortunately that is a platform limitation, we are exploring ways to make the loading/async tasks simpler, but the way RemoteViews handle images cannot be changed.

[andrew]

Gotcha, that makes sense, thank you!

[Marcel Pinto]

You can either use resourceIds, bitmaps or URIs. The problem with bitmaps is that you might exceed the RemoteViews max size, so URIs is the better choice

[andrew]

Gotcha, I'm currently rewriting our widget and weighing the options using this, other devs on our team decided to use bitmaps

[Marcel Pinto]

if it’s small and not too many it might be okay, otherwise you might hit the size limit

[andrew]

The images are full size, some quite large

[andrew]

There's no CDN backing either with support of scaling down

[Marcel Pinto]

you could get the available size for the widget, reduce the images locally and store them