Question

Is there a way to understand if a user, in the home screen, is clicking an app’s icon or simply the desktop?

During the develop of a live wallpaper, i overridden the onTouchEvent function

@Override
    public void onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event) {
        int action = event.getAction();
        float currentXPosition = event.getX();
        float currentYPosition = event.getY();
        Log.d(Constants.TAG_DISPLAY, "Action = " + action);
        Log.d(Constants.TAG_DISPLAY, "X = " + currentXPosition + "Y = " + currentYPosition);

        if (action == MotionEvent.ACTION_UP) {
            Log.d(Constants.TAG_DISPLAY, "FIRE Action, drawframe");
            pos[0] = Math.round(currentXPosition) + 150;
            pos[1] = Math.round(currentYPosition) - 50;
            drawFrame(true, true);
        }
        super.onTouchEvent(event);
    }

in order to refresh the wallpaper. But I don’t want to refresh it if the user is opening an application. From event or the super action, it’s possible to determine the user action?

Answer 1

I found a workaround to understand if a user open an app. Just the open process, not bring to foreground a background app.

public int getTotalRunningApp(){
    ActivityManager actvityManager = (ActivityManager) this.getSystemService( ACTIVITY_SERVICE );
    List<RunningAppProcessInfo> procInfos = actvityManager.getRunningAppProcesses();
    return procInfos.size();
}


@Override
public void onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event) {           
    int runApp = getTotalRunningApp();
    Log.wtf(Constants.TAG_APP, "RunningApp = " + runApp);           
    ...
    super.onTouchEvent(event);
    runApp = getTotalRunningApp();
    Log.wtf(Constants.TAG_APP, "RunningApp = " + runApp);
    ...
}

By calling getTotalRunningApp() before and after the real super.onTouchEvent we can monitorize the number of running app and understand “a little” if a user is tapping an app or just moving homescreen or doing nothing.
It’s not working with background app.