How can I detect if my Android app is displayed?

Question

I have an Android app with a service that runs in the background doing various client/server connections. How can I check in my running service if any screen from my app is displayed?

Answer 1

You can get the list of running processes and check if yours is in foreground with the following code:

ActivityManager actMngr = (ActivityManager) getSystemService(ACTIVITY_SERVICE);

List<RunningAppProcessInfo> runningAppProcesses = actMngr.getRunningAppProcesses();
for (RunningAppProcessInfo pi : runningAppProcesses) {
    if (getPackageName().equals(pi.processName)) {

        boolean inForeground = pi.importance == RunningAppProcessInfo.IMPORTANCE_FOREGROUND;
    }
}

Check more at http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo.html