Android: How can I get the current foreground activity (from a service)?

Question

Is there a native android way to get a reference to the currently running Activity from a service?

I have a service running on the background, and I would like to up

Answer 1

I'm using this for my tests. It's API > 19, and only for activities of your app, though.

@TargetApi(Build.VERSION_CODES.KITKAT)
public static Activity getRunningActivity() {
    try {
        Class activityThreadClass = Class.forName("android.app.ActivityThread");
        Object activityThread = activityThreadClass.getMethod("currentActivityThread")
                .invoke(null);
        Field activitiesField = activityThreadClass.getDeclaredField("mActivities");
        activitiesField.setAccessible(true);
        ArrayMap activities = (ArrayMap) activitiesField.get(activityThread);
        for (Object activityRecord : activities.values()) {
            Class activityRecordClass = activityRecord.getClass();
            Field pausedField = activityRecordClass.getDeclaredField("paused");
            pausedField.setAccessible(true);
            if (!pausedField.getBoolean(activityRecord)) {
                Field activityField = activityRecordClass.getDeclaredField("activity");
                activityField.setAccessible(true);
                return (Activity) activityField.get(activityRecord);
            }
        }
    } catch (Exception e) {
        throw new RuntimeException(e);
    }

    throw new RuntimeException("Didn't find the running activity");
}