How to get current foreground activity context in android?

Question

(Note: An official API was added in API 14: See this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/29786451/119733)

DO NOT USE PREVIOUS (waqas716) answer.

You will have memory leak problem, because of the static reference to the activity. For more detail see the following link http://android-developers.blogspot.fr/2009/01/avoiding-memory-leaks.html

To avoid this, you should manage activities references. Add the name of the application in the manifest file:

<application
    android:name=".MyApp"
    ....
 </application>

Your application class :

  public class MyApp extends Application {
        public void onCreate() {
              super.onCreate();
        }

        private Activity mCurrentActivity = null;
        public Activity getCurrentActivity(){
              return mCurrentActivity;
        }
        public void setCurrentActivity(Activity mCurrentActivity){
              this.mCurrentActivity = mCurrentActivity;
        }
  }

Create a new Activity :

public class MyBaseActivity extends Activity {
    protected MyApp mMyApp;

    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        mMyApp = (MyApp)this.getApplicationContext();
    }
    protected void onResume() {
        super.onResume();
        mMyApp.setCurrentActivity(this);
    }
    protected void onPause() {
        clearReferences();
        super.onPause();
    }
    protected void onDestroy() {        
        clearReferences();
        super.onDestroy();
    }

    private void clearReferences(){
        Activity currActivity = mMyApp.getCurrentActivity();
        if (this.equals(currActivity))
            mMyApp.setCurrentActivity(null);
    }
}

So, now instead of extending Activity class for your activities, just extend MyBaseActivity. Now, you can get your current activity from application or Activity context like that :

Activity currentActivity = ((MyApp)context.getApplicationContext()).getCurrentActivity();

I expand on the top of @gezdy's answer.

In every Activities, instead of having to "register" itself with Application with manual coding, we can make use of the following API since level 14, to help us achieve similar purpose with less manual coding.

public void registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks (Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks callback)

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Application.html#registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks%28android.app.Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks%29

In Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks, you can get which Activity is "attached" to or "detached" to this Application.

However, this technique is only available since API level 14.

Update 3: There is an official api added for this, please use ActivityLifecycleCallbacks instead.

@lockwobr Thanks for update

This does not work 100% of the time in api version 16, if you read the code on github the function "currentActivityThread" was change in Kitkat, so I want to say version 19ish, kind of hard to match api version to releases in github.

Having access to the current Activity is very handy. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a static getActivity method returning the current Activity with no unnecessary questions?

The Activity class is very useful. It gives access to the application’s UI thread, views, resources, and many more. Numerous methods require a Context, but how to get the pointer? Here are some ways:

• Tracking the application’s state using overridden lifecycle methods. You have to store the current Activity in a static variable and you need access to the code of all Activities.
• Tracking the application’s state using Instrumentation. Declare Instrumentation in the manifest, implement it and use its methods to track Activity changes. Passing an Activity pointer to methods and classes used in your Activities. Injecting the pointer using one of the code injection libraries. All of these approaches are rather inconvenient; fortunately, there is a much easier way to get the current Activity.
• Seems like the system needs access to all Activities without the issues mentioned above. So, most likely there is a way to get Activities using only static calls. I spent a lot of time digging through the Android sources on grepcode.com, and I found what I was looking for. There is a class called ActivityThread. This class has access to all Activities and, what’s even better, has a static method for getting the current ActivityThread. There is only one little problem – the Activity list has package access.

Easy to solve using reflection:

public static Activity getActivity() {
    Class activityThreadClass = Class.forName("android.app.ActivityThread");
    Object activityThread = activityThreadClass.getMethod("currentActivityThread").invoke(null);
    Field activitiesField = activityThreadClass.getDeclaredField("mActivities");
    activitiesField.setAccessible(true);

    Map<Object, Object> activities = (Map<Object, Object>) activitiesField.get(activityThread);
    if (activities == null)
        return null;

    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);
            Activity activity = (Activity) activityField.get(activityRecord);
            return activity;
        }
    }

    return null;
}

Such a method can be used anywhere in the app and it’s much more convenient than all of the mentioned approaches. Moreover, it seems like it’s not as unsafe as it looks. It doesn’t introduce any new potential leaks or null pointers.

The above code snippet lacks exception handling and naively assumes that the first running Activity is the one we’re looking for. You might want to add some additional checks.

Blog Post

Knowing that ActivityManager manages Activity, so we can gain information from ActivityManager. We get the current foreground running Activity by

ActivityManager am = (ActivityManager)context.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
ComponentName cn = am.getRunningTasks(1).get(0).topActivity;

UPDATE 2018/10/03
getRunningTasks() is DEPRECATED. see the solutions below.

This method was deprecated in API level 21. As of Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP, this method is no longer available to third party applications: the introduction of document-centric recents means it can leak person information to the caller. For backwards compatibility, it will still return a small subset of its data: at least the caller's own tasks, and possibly some other tasks such as home that are known to not be sensitive.

I did the Following in Kotlin

1. Create Application Class

2. Edit the Application Class as Follows

   class FTApplication: MultiDexApplication() {
   override fun attachBaseContext(base: Context?) {
       super.attachBaseContext(base)
       MultiDex.install(this)
   }
   
   init {
       instance = this
   }
   
   val mFTActivityLifecycleCallbacks = FTActivityLifecycleCallbacks()
   
   override fun onCreate() {
       super.onCreate()
   
       registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks(mFTActivityLifecycleCallbacks)
   }
   
   companion object {
       private var instance: FTApplication? = null
   
       fun currentActivity(): Activity? {
   
           return instance!!.mFTActivityLifecycleCallbacks.currentActivity
       }
   }
   
    }
   

3. Create the ActivityLifecycleCallbacks class

   class FTActivityLifecycleCallbacks: Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks {
   
   var currentActivity: Activity? = null
   
   override fun onActivityPaused(activity: Activity?) {
       currentActivity = activity
   }
   
   override fun onActivityResumed(activity: Activity?) {
       currentActivity = activity
   }
   
   override fun onActivityStarted(activity: Activity?) {
       currentActivity = activity
   }
   
   override fun onActivityDestroyed(activity: Activity?) {
   }
   
   override fun onActivitySaveInstanceState(activity: Activity?, outState: Bundle?) {
   }
   
   override fun onActivityStopped(activity: Activity?) {
   }
   
   override fun onActivityCreated(activity: Activity?, savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
       currentActivity = activity
   }
   
   }
   

4. you can now use it in any class by calling the following: FTApplication.currentActivity()