Listen to ActivityManager events?
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20-09-2019 - |
Question
is it possible somehow to listen to the events of the ActivityManager, e.g. when activities are started? Does the ActivityManager send broadcasts? I havn't found anything indicating that it does.
What I basically need to do: I want my app to launch one of my activities whenever a certain (thirdparty) app is launched/takes focus. Problem is this needs to happen before the thirdparty app is actually displayed.
What I have tried so far as workarounds:
- Logcat output: I query logcat every 0.8s (filtered to show ActivityManager events only) but this eats up to many ressources
- getRunningTasks: Slows down the phone a lot too and is not very safe, as an activity might be running but not currently in focus
Any ideas?
Solution
I suppose there is no actually other legacy way to handle glabal system state, only
(ActivityManager)getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
ActivityManager.getRecentTasks() - Return a list of the tasks that are currently running, with the most recent being first and older ones after in order.
For details check docs
Perhaps though Android is a Linux you can run system tools like
Runtime.getRuntime().exec("ps -aux | grep smth")
But I think it would be hard to detect particular java application.
OTHER TIPS
I think you can use the launch mode to determine which activity to launch to top level. Please check the question: Android singleTask or singleInstance launch mode?. Maybe it will help you.
I had a look in the android source, but there doesn't seem to be any events broadcasted.
https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/providers/ApplicationsProvider