How to detect when an Android app goes to the background and come back to the foreground

Question

I am trying to write an app that does something specific when it is brought back to the foreground after some amount of time. Is there a way to detect when an app is sent to

Answer 1

Edit: the new architecture components brought something promising: ProcessLifecycleOwner, see @vokilam's answer

---

The actual solution according to a Google I/O talk:

class YourApplication : Application() {

  override fun onCreate() {
    super.onCreate()
    registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks(AppLifecycleTracker())
  }

}


class AppLifecycleTracker : Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks  {

  private var numStarted = 0

  override fun onActivityStarted(activity: Activity?) {
    if (numStarted == 0) {
      // app went to foreground
    }
    numStarted++
  }

  override fun onActivityStopped(activity: Activity?) {
    numStarted--
    if (numStarted == 0) {
      // app went to background
    }
  }

}

Yes. I know it's hard to believe this simple solution works since we have so many weird solutions here.

But there is hope.