My question today relates to the android home screen and where it stores icon / widget positions. Specifically, I am interested in accessing the positions and sizes of any icons that are currently being displayed. I have, so far, been unable to find a method of retrieving the positions of other applications but i figure it must be possible in some way due to the presence of third-party home screen applications.
Ideally, I am hoping to query the positions of whatever is on the screen at the moment from a live wallpaper and adjust my rendering accordingly.
Thank you in advance for your time.
There is no way as far as I know of doing this. You may be able to contact the developer of the homescreen (if it’s not the default one or senseUI) and have them expose an API to do this.
Third party homescreens draw all the icons themselves. They REPLACE the original homescreen, they don’t just put a theme on top of it.
You should just create your live wallpaper and if the user wants to see it instead of homescreen icons or widgets, they can move them. It would be impossible to take into account all the widgets and crap on the screen.