Checking if an Android application is running in the background

Question

By background, I mean none of the application\'s activities are currently visible to the user?

Answer 1

None of the answers quite fitted the specific case if you're looked to know if a specfic activity is in the forground and if you're an SDK without direct access to the Application. For me I was in background thread having just recieved a push notification for a new chat message and only want to display a system notification if the chat screen isn't in the foreground.

Using the ActivityLifecycleCallbacks that as been recommended in other answers I've created a small util class that houses the logic to whether MyActivity is in the Foreground or not.

class MyActivityMonitor(context: Context) : Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks {

private var isMyActivityInForeground = false

init {
    (context.applicationContext as Application).registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks(this)
}

fun isMyActivityForeground() = isMyActivityInForeground

override fun onActivityPaused(activity: Activity?) {
    if (activity is MyActivity) {
        isMyActivityInForeground = false
    }
}

override fun onActivityResumed(activity: Activity?) {
    if (activity is MyActivity) {
        isMyActivityInForeground = true
    }
}

}