How Can You Retain Data in Android Apps During Configuration Changes Like Screen Rotations?

One of the common headaches when building Android apps is handling configuration changes, like when a user rotates their phone. By default, Android destroys and recreates the activity or fragment, which can wipe out any data held in memory. That means users might lose their place, and the app can feel glitchy or unreliable. The good news? Android has a solid fix for this: the ViewModel architecture component. It helps you retain data across these changes without extra hacks or messy workarounds.

Challenge:

Rotate your phone and boom – your activity dies. All the data goes with it. Users have to start over.

Solution:

Use ViewModel to store your data. It survives configuration changes like rotation. When your activity recreates itself, the data is still there waiting in the ViewModel.

kotlin
class MainViewModel : ViewModel() { val userData = MutableLiveData<User>()
}
// In Activity
val viewModel: MainViewModel = ViewModelProvider(this).get(MainViewModel::class.java)
viewModel.userData.observe(this) { updateUI(it) }

Conclusion:

ViewModel has a longer lifecycle than your activity. Hire Android developers that understand how rotation destroys the activity but ViewModel continues living. Your users keep their data intact throughout the transition.