How to detect when an Android app goes to the background and come back to the foreground

Question

I am trying to write an app that does something specific when it is brought back to the foreground after some amount of time. Is there a way to detect when an app is sent to

Answer 1

You can achieve this easily with the help of ActivityLifecycleCallbacks and ComponentCallbacks2 something like below.

Create a class AppLifeCycleHandler implementing above said interfaces.

package com.sample.app;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.app.Application;
import android.content.ComponentCallbacks2;
import android.content.res.Configuration;
import android.os.Bundle;

/**
 * Created by Naveen on 17/04/18
 */
public class AppLifeCycleHandler
    implements Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks, ComponentCallbacks2 {

  AppLifeCycleCallback appLifeCycleCallback;

  boolean appInForeground;

  public AppLifeCycleHandler(AppLifeCycleCallback appLifeCycleCallback) {
    this.appLifeCycleCallback = appLifeCycleCallback;
  }

  @Override
  public void onActivityResumed(Activity activity) {
    if (!appInForeground) {
      appInForeground = true;
      appLifeCycleCallback.onAppForeground();
    }
  }

  @Override
  public void onTrimMemory(int i) {
    if (i == ComponentCallbacks2.TRIM_MEMORY_UI_HIDDEN) {
      appInForeground = false;
      appLifeCycleCallback.onAppBackground();
    }
  }

  @Override
  public void onActivityCreated(Activity activity, Bundle bundle) {

  }

  @Override
  public void onActivityStarted(Activity activity) {

  }

  @Override
  public void onActivityPaused(Activity activity) {

  }

  @Override
  public void onActivityStopped(Activity activity) {

  }

  @Override
  public void onActivitySaveInstanceState(Activity activity, Bundle bundle) {

  }

  @Override
  public void onActivityDestroyed(Activity activity) {

  }

  @Override
  public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration configuration) {

  }

  @Override
  public void onLowMemory() {

  }

  interface AppLifeCycleCallback {

    void onAppBackground();

    void onAppForeground();
  }
}

In your class which extends Application implement AppLifeCycleCallback to get the callbacks when app switches between foreground and background. Something like below.

public class BaseApplication extends Application implements AppLifeCycleHandler.AppLifeCycleCallback{

    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();
        AppLifeCycleHandler appLifeCycleHandler = new AppLifeCycleHandler(this);
        registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks(appLifeCycleHandler);
        registerComponentCallbacks(appLifeCycleHandler);
    }

    @Override
    public void onAppBackground() {
        Log.d("LifecycleEvent", "onAppBackground");
    }

    @Override
    public void onAppForeground() {
        Log.d("LifecycleEvent", "onAppForeground");
    }
}

Hope this helps.

EDIT As an alternative you can now use Life cycle aware architecture component.