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

I have created a project on Github app-foreground-background-listen

Create a BaseActivity for all Activity in your application.

public class BaseActivity extends Activity {

    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT);
    }

    public static boolean isAppInFg = false;
    public static boolean isScrInFg = false;
    public static boolean isChangeScrFg = false;

    @Override
    protected void onStart() {
        if (!isAppInFg) {
            isAppInFg = true;
            isChangeScrFg = false;
            onAppStart();
        }
        else {
            isChangeScrFg = true;
        }
        isScrInFg = true;

        super.onStart();
    }

    @Override
    protected void onStop() {
        super.onStop();

        if (!isScrInFg || !isChangeScrFg) {
            isAppInFg = false;
            onAppPause();
        }
        isScrInFg = false;
    }

    public void onAppStart() {

        // Remove this toast
        Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "App in foreground",    Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

        // Your code
    }

    public void onAppPause() {

        // Remove this toast
        Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "App in background",  Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

        // Your code
    }
}

Now use this BaseActivity as a super class of all your Activity like MainActivity extends BaseActivity and onAppStart will be called when you start your application and onAppPause() will be called when the application goes the background from any screen.