Question

How can I have my Android app resume where it last was, i.e. the Activity in view, etc.? If I am showing an Activity and press the Home button and then launch my app again it returns to the startup activity. I’d like it to work like an iPhone app where it suspends in place and resumes back to where the user last was.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You may need to set android:alwaysRetainTaskState=”true” for your root activity in the manifest. From the documentation:

Whether or not the state of the task
that the activity is in will always be
maintained by the system — “true” if
it will be, and “false” if the system
is allowed to reset the task to its
initial state in certain situations.
The default value is “false”. This
attribute is meaningful only for the
root activity of a task; it’s ignored
for all other activities.

Normally,
the system clears a task (removes all
activities from the stack above the
root activity) in certain situations
when the user re-selects that task
from the home screen. Typically, this
is done if the user hasn’t visited the
task for a certain amount of time,
such as 30 minutes.

However, when this
attribute is “true”, users will always
return to the task in its last state,
regardless of how they get there. This
is useful, for example, in an
application like the web browser where
there is a lot of state (such as
multiple open tabs) that users would
not like to lose.