Bring A Running Android App to Foreground

Question

I am designing a testing tool that requires launching another app and then bring back my activity that I was working on to the foreground. I have been trying to tackle this problem using a receiver but no luck so far. Any suggestion would be very appreciated.

Answer 1

If you don't want to make anything special, than just add a post job (with some delay) to your current handler and send an Intent to start your Activity with flag bring to foreground.

Example for clarification:

    /*
    * Your code to launch the 3rd party app
     */
    Handler handler=new Handler();
    handler.postDelayed(new Runnable(){
        public void run() {
            Intent openMe = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), MyActivity.class);
            openMe.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP); //experiment with the flags
            startActivity(openMe);
        }}, 3000);

As the docu says, maybe you should use FLAG_ACTIVITY_REORDER_TO_FRONT

You can also store information's inside of the Intent to retrieve later and rebuildt your screen.

Example:

intent.putExtra("someStringAsIdentifier", someInformationObject);

Inside of you new activity in onCreate you do:

Intent i = getIntent();
Bundle extras = i.getExtras();
if(extras != null){
    informationObject = extras.getExtra("someStringAsIdentifier");
}

See the docs of Intent for more information. :)