Question

In my application I need to detect whether my application is going to background or is switching to another activity of the same application… I know that I have to use the onPause method… but how can I distinguish the two cases?

Answer 1

private static boolean isApplicationGoingToBackground(final Context context) {

        ActivityManager am = (ActivityManager) context.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
        List<RunningTaskInfo> tasks = am.getRunningTasks(1);
        if (!tasks.isEmpty()) {
            ComponentName topActivity = tasks.get(0).topActivity;
            if (!topActivity.getPackageName().equals(context.getPackageName())) {
                return true;
            }
        }

        return false;
    }

UPDATE: getRunningTasks has been declared to not be guaranteed to be accurate.

Call in onStop. onStop gets called after onStart of whatever takes over the screen – if its an activity in the same apk package then you’re not going into the background. This does require the GET_TASKS permission.

Or bind to a service onStart & unbind onStop – the service will then be onDestroyed when all your activities are stopped (or track binds vs unbinds if you don’t want to rely on onDestroyed getting called – because it might not..).