Any way to have initial delay for PeriodicWorkRequest

Question

For OneTimeWorkRequest, we can have setInitialDelay to specific the initial delay.

However, there isn\'t such facility for PeriodicWorkRe

Answer 1

Since androidx.work:work-*:2.1.0, PeriodicWorkRequests support initial delays. You can use the setInitialDelay method on PeriodicWorkRequest.Builder to set an initial delay.

See link for official documentation.

Answer 2

Since the system runs your work you can't control the exact time it will run..

Your best option for creating a work execution delay is to use this PeriodicWorkRequest.Builder and supply a flexInterval as the 4th parameter:

PeriodicWorkRequest build = new PeriodicWorkRequest.Builder(
     SyncJobWorker.class, 
     REPEAT_INTERVAL, // repeatInterval
     TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS, // repeatIntervalTimeUnit
     FLEX_INTERVAL, // flexInterval
     TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS) // flexIntervalTimeUnit
       .build();

Docs ref: https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/work/PeriodicWorkRequest.Builder#periodicworkrequestbuilder_2

Creates a PeriodicWorkRequest to run periodically once within the flex period of every interval period. See diagram below. The flex period begins at intervalMillis - flexMillis to the end of the interval. intervalMillis must be greater than or equal to PeriodicWorkRequest.MIN_PERIODIC_INTERVAL_MILLIS and flexMillis must be greater than or equal to PeriodicWorkRequest.MIN_PERIODIC_FLEX_MILLIS.