how to pause and resume a surfaceView thread

Question

I have a surfaceView setup and running, but when I resume it I get an error that the thread has already been started. What\'s the proper way to handle when the app goes to t

Answer 1

Tried to comment on the accepted answer above but couldn't, new to this. I don't think you should be calling your start/stop thread methods from both your SurfaceView and Activity. This will result in starting/stopping the thread doubly, and you can't start a thread more than once. Just call your methods from the Activity's onPause and onResume. They're called when exiting and re-entering the app so this will make sure your states are handled properly. surfaceDestroyed isn't always called, which messed me up for a while.

If you use this method make sure to check for a valid surface in your run code before working with your canvas, because the Activity will start the thread in onResume before the surface is available.

        while (_run) {
            if (_surfaceHolder.getSurface().isValid()) {
                ...
            }
        } //end _run