Exclude current activity from Recent Tasks

Question

My app, running in background, at some point displays activity to purposefully interrupt user's flow. My activity starts a new task, which appears in "Recent Tasks" lists while being in foreground. Is there any way it could be prevented? Setting android:excludeFromRecents does not work - activity is not presented anymore in "Recent Tasks" only after is has been paused.

Manifest looks like:

<activity
    android:name="com.example.recenttasks.MainActivity"
    android:excludeFromRecents="true">
</activity>

and activity is started this way:

@Override
public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
    Intent i = new Intent(context, MainActivity.class);
    i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
    context.startActivity(i);
}

Answer 1

The key thing you mentioned is

appears in "Recent Tasks" lists while being in foreground

I think you can't change that behavior. I just tested on my app and the same thing happens. If I press the "recent tasks" button while having my activity in the foreground, it appears listed there. The moment I move out of it to another activity or to my phone's main screen, the activity is not listed anymore.

I also tested this on the built-in DeskClock app that comes with recent Android versions and the same behavior is present there when a new alarm is triggered. Note that the AlarmAlertFullscreen activity of that app has the same parameters you mentioned in your question.

I'm not sure you can circumvent this or why you would need to in the first place since the activity is not listed anymore once it loses the focus.