Determining the current foreground application fro

Question

I wish to have one application that runs in the background, which knows when any of the built-in applications (messaging, contacts, etc) is running.

So my questions are:

1. How I should run my application in the background.

2. How my background application can know what the application currently running in the foreground is.

Responses from folks with experience would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

i had to figure out the right solution the hard way. the below code is part of cyanogenmod7 (the tablet tweaks) and is tested on android 2.3.3 / gingerbread.

methods:

• getForegroundApp - returns the foreground application.
• getActivityForApp - returns the activity of the found app.
• isStillActive - determines if a earlier found app is still the active app.
• isRunningService - a helper function for getForegroundApp

this hopefully answers this issue in all extend (:

private RunningAppProcessInfo getForegroundApp() {
    RunningAppProcessInfo result=null, info=null;

    if(mActivityManager==null)
        mActivityManager = (ActivityManager)mContext.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
    List <RunningAppProcessInfo> l = mActivityManager.getRunningAppProcesses();
    Iterator <RunningAppProcessInfo> i = l.iterator();
    while(i.hasNext()){
        info = i.next();
        if(info.importance == RunningAppProcessInfo.IMPORTANCE_FOREGROUND
                && !isRunningService(info.processName)){
            result=info;
            break;
        }
    }
    return result;
}

private ComponentName getActivityForApp(RunningAppProcessInfo target){
    ComponentName result=null;
    ActivityManager.RunningTaskInfo info;

    if(target==null)
        return null;

    if(mActivityManager==null)
        mActivityManager = (ActivityManager)mContext.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
    List <ActivityManager.RunningTaskInfo> l = mActivityManager.getRunningTasks(9999);
    Iterator <ActivityManager.RunningTaskInfo> i = l.iterator();

    while(i.hasNext()){
        info=i.next();
        if(info.baseActivity.getPackageName().equals(target.processName)){
            result=info.topActivity;
            break;
        }
    }

    return result;
}

private boolean isStillActive(RunningAppProcessInfo process, ComponentName activity)
{
    // activity can be null in cases, where one app starts another. for example, astro
    // starting rock player when a move file was clicked. we dont have an activity then,
    // but the package exits as soon as back is hit. so we can ignore the activity
    // in this case
    if(process==null)
        return false;

    RunningAppProcessInfo currentFg=getForegroundApp();
    ComponentName currentActivity=getActivityForApp(currentFg);

    if(currentFg!=null && currentFg.processName.equals(process.processName) &&
            (activity==null || currentActivity.compareTo(activity)==0))
        return true;

    Slog.i(TAG, "isStillActive returns false - CallerProcess: " + process.processName + " CurrentProcess: "
            + (currentFg==null ? "null" : currentFg.processName) + " CallerActivity:" + (activity==null ? "null" : activity.toString())
            + " CurrentActivity: " + (currentActivity==null ? "null" : currentActivity.toString()));
    return false;
}

private boolean isRunningService(String processname){
    if(processname==null || processname.isEmpty())
        return false;

    RunningServiceInfo service;

    if(mActivityManager==null)
        mActivityManager = (ActivityManager)mContext.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
    List <RunningServiceInfo> l = mActivityManager.getRunningServices(9999);
    Iterator <RunningServiceInfo> i = l.iterator();
    while(i.hasNext()){
        service = i.next();
        if(service.process.equals(processname))
            return true;
    }

    return false;
}

Answer 2

With regards to "2. How my background application can know what the application currently running in the foreground is."

Do NOT use the getRunningAppProcesses() method as this returns all sorts of system rubbish from my experience and you'll get multiple results which have RunningAppProcessInfo.IMPORTANCE_FOREGROUND. Use getRunningTasks() instead

This is the code I use in my service to identify the current foreground application, its really easy:

ActivityManager am = (ActivityManager) AppService.this.getSystemService(ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
// The first in the list of RunningTasks is always the foreground task.
RunningTaskInfo foregroundTaskInfo = am.getRunningTasks(1).get(0);

Thats it, then you can easily access details of the foreground app/activity:

String foregroundTaskPackageName = foregroundTaskInfo .topActivity.getPackageName();
PackageManager pm = AppService.this.getPackageManager();
PackageInfo foregroundAppPackageInfo = pm.getPackageInfo(foregroundTaskPackageName, 0);
String foregroundTaskAppName = foregroundAppPackageInfo.applicationInfo.loadLabel(pm).toString();

This requires an additional permission in activity menifest and works perfectly.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.GET_TASKS" />

Answer 3

From lollipop onwards this got changed. Please find below code, before that user has to go Settings -> Security -> (Scroll down to last) Apps with usage access -> Give the permissions to our app

private void printForegroundTask() {
    String currentApp = "NULL";
    if(android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP) {
        UsageStatsManager usm = (UsageStatsManager) this.getSystemService(Context.USAGE_STATS_SERVICE);
        long time = System.currentTimeMillis();
        List<UsageStats> appList = usm.queryUsageStats(UsageStatsManager.INTERVAL_DAILY,  time - 1000*1000, time);
        if (appList != null && appList.size() > 0) {
            SortedMap<Long, UsageStats> mySortedMap = new TreeMap<Long, UsageStats>();
            for (UsageStats usageStats : appList) {
                mySortedMap.put(usageStats.getLastTimeUsed(), usageStats);
            }
            if (mySortedMap != null && !mySortedMap.isEmpty()) {
                currentApp = mySortedMap.get(mySortedMap.lastKey()).getPackageName();
            }
        }
    } else {
        ActivityManager am = (ActivityManager)this.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
        List<ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo> tasks = am.getRunningAppProcesses();
        currentApp = tasks.get(0).processName;
    }

    Log.e(TAG, "Current App in foreground is: " + currentApp);
}

Answer 4

Taking into account that getRunningTasks() is deprecated and getRunningAppProcesses() is not reliable, I came to decision to combine 2 approaches mentioned in StackOverflow:

   private boolean isAppInForeground(Context context)
    {
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT < Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP)
        {
            ActivityManager am = (ActivityManager) context.getSystemService(ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
            ActivityManager.RunningTaskInfo foregroundTaskInfo = am.getRunningTasks(1).get(0);
            String foregroundTaskPackageName = foregroundTaskInfo.topActivity.getPackageName();

            return foregroundTaskPackageName.toLowerCase().equals(context.getPackageName().toLowerCase());
        }
        else
        {
            ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo appProcessInfo = new ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo();
            ActivityManager.getMyMemoryState(appProcessInfo);
            if (appProcessInfo.importance == IMPORTANCE_FOREGROUND || appProcessInfo.importance == IMPORTANCE_VISIBLE)
            {
                return true;
            }

            KeyguardManager km = (KeyguardManager) context.getSystemService(Context.KEYGUARD_SERVICE);
            // App is foreground, but screen is locked, so show notification
            return km.inKeyguardRestrictedInputMode();
        }
    }

Answer 5

In lollipop and up:

Add to mainfest:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.GET_TASKS" />

And do something like this:

if( mTaskId < 0 )
{
    List<AppTask> tasks = mActivityManager.getAppTasks(); 
    if( tasks.size() > 0 )
        mTaskId = tasks.get( 0 ).getTaskInfo().id;
}

Answer 6

In order to determine the foreground application, you can use for detecting the foreground app, you can use https://github.com/ricvalerio/foregroundappchecker. It uses different methods depending on the android version of the device.

As for the service, the repo also provides the code you need for it. Essentially, let android studio create the service for you, and then onCreate add the snippet that uses the appChecker. You will need to request permission however.