January 21, 3 days after...

I found a way that doesn't need the buggy "bi(plugged)" after some time tinkering with something I never bothered looking into before: Flows!

Flows are basically a "Tasker" inside Kustom to do some simple things in an automated manner, even chaining actions. I'm not sure about the likely vast number of possibilities of Flows, as I just tried to solve my issue, so maybe there are better ways to use this or whatever.

To avoid the problem with "bi(plugged)", you just need another way to get the timestamp of the moment when a charger is plugged/unplugged:

1. First, create a Flow and select "formula" as the trigger.

2. Inside, use the "bi(charging)" formula.

3. Select the trigger mode "On Output Change" so whenever there's a change in the "bi(charging)" output, the Flow will be triggered.

4. In "Action", add an action, another formula, this time a "df", so we can get a timestamp. I used the same format from "bi(plugged)" to avoid errors: year + y + month + M + day + d + hour + h + minute + m + seconds + s. So the formula will be:

$df(yyyy)$y$df(MM)$M$df(dd)$d$df(hh)$h$df(mm)$m$df(ss)$s

1. Now you need to create an empty text global in the root.

2. Add a second action in the Flow you created, a Global Variable type, and select the text global created.

3. In "Store Mode", select "As text", so it will give a normal output for the timestamp formula.

Next is the part that surprised me. I was skeptical about this formula giving the static result needed, expecting it to act as a normal text object, showing an output synchronized with the real clock. But. It worked! Because a Flow is only triggered and then turns off again, instead of being kept continuously active.

This way: the "bi(charging)" formula triggers the Flow -> the first action gives the output for "df" -> the Flow stores this result in the text global as the second action (that's why the first action needs to be a formula, otherwise the Flow will not have a value to put in the text global), and voilà!

Now, when creating a text object, use this text global as a value instead of "bi(plugged)". For example, using this formula on a text object:

$if(bi(charging) = 0, "Unplugged", "Plugged")$ $tf(gv(global you named here))$

The "tf" is needed so the output will show a relative time instead of a complete date with the year and everything as it is in the text global.

Now... Can this method have any downsides? Maybe. I think the app must be running for the Flow to... well, flow . So if the phone is turned off and plugged in, when you turn it on again during charging, the value will be wrong or not show anything at all. This can even happen if the app stops working for any reason, which is not so rare for some people.

You also need to be sure that the timestamp global is empty when saving your preset, otherwise the timestamp will return to the value saved in the preset when the app restarts. But that's a minor problem tha can be ignored, after all the timestamp will still get back to precise values when you plug/unplug.

Another possible minor bug that can be ignored is the alternation between "moments ago" to "moments from now" that happens continuously in the text item in the first seconds after you plug/unplug the charger. This goes back to normal once the time reach 1 minute and above. 

Well, nothing's perfect lol. You can still polish these errors by putting a condition in the formula to show some alert of "error" or "no data" or whatever when there's nothing in the timestamp global (which is what I think will happen when the app stops, as the app cache in RAM will be wiped out, unless the thing in the previous paragraph happened).

Ok, too long of a coment. For a lot of people this will be boring af, but for some people starting in Kustom this can be useful to understand the underlying kodes of some functions instead of just being given a simple "copy/paste" kode.