Wallpaper Changes = Configuration Changes?

This Stack Overflow question pointed outan interesting problem with the shipping Android 12 release: changing wallpaper resultsin an effect that feels a lot like a configuration change.

Specifically:

Start an app

Use system HOME navigation to return to the home screen

Change your wallpaper

Return to the app��� and the activity will be destroyed and recreated

As the person who asked the SO question suggests, this feels like it is tied to Material You.I can see perhaps having a configuration change for this scenario, for apps that wantto react to the new colors stemming from the new wallpaper.

However, at the same time, this does not seem to respect any android:configChangevalues, even the undocumented ones.

����

I can see a few possibilities for what is going on:

This is a configuration change, and there is an android:configChanges valuethat we can use, but that value did not make it into the documentation or thespots in the source code that I checked

This is a configuration change, but Google elected not to have an android:configChangesvalue for it

This is not a configuration change, but something that behaves a bit like one

For apps that rely upon avoiding the automatic destroy/recreate cycle of configurationchanges, whatever this is can cause some serious problems.

If you have some insights as to what is going on here, post an answer,add a useful comment, orjust reach out!.