How to check if activity is in foreground or in visible background?

This is what is recommended as the right solution:

The right solution (credits go to Dan, CommonsWare and NeTeInStEiN) Track visibility of your application by yourself using Activity.onPause, Activity.onResume methods. Store "visibility" status in some other class. Good choices are your own implementation of the Application or a Service (there are also a few variations of this solution if you'd like to check activity visibility from the service).

Example Implement custom Application class (note the isActivityVisible() static method):

public class MyApplication extends Application {

  public static boolean isActivityVisible() {
    return activityVisible;
  }  

  public static void activityResumed() {
    activityVisible = true;
  }

  public static void activityPaused() {
    activityVisible = false;
  }

  private static boolean activityVisible;
}

Register your application class in AndroidManifest.xml:

<application
    android:name="your.app.package.MyApplication"
    android:icon="@drawable/icon"
    android:label="@string/app_name" >

Add onPause and onResume to every Activity in the project (you may create a common ancestor for your Activities if you'd like to, but if your activity is already extended from MapActivity/ListActivity etc. you still need to write the following by hand):

@Override
protected void onResume() {
  super.onResume();
  MyApplication.activityResumed();
}

@Override
protected void onPause() {
  super.onPause();
  MyApplication.activityPaused();
}

In your finish() method, you want to use isActivityVisible() to check if the activity is visible or not. There you can also check if the user has selected an option or not. Continue when both conditions are met.

The source also mentions two wrong solutions...so avoid doing that.

Source: stackoverflow

If targeting API level 14 or above, one can use android.app.Application.ActivityLifecycleCallbacks

public class MyApplication extends Application implements ActivityLifecycleCallbacks {
    private static boolean isInterestingActivityVisible;

    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();

        // Register to be notified of activity state changes
        registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks(this);
        ....
    }

    public boolean isInterestingActivityVisible() {
        return isInterestingActivityVisible;
    }

    @Override
    public void onActivityResumed(Activity activity) {
        if (activity instanceof MyInterestingActivity) {
             isInterestingActivityVisible = true;
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void onActivityStopped(Activity activity) {
        if (activity instanceof MyInterestingActivity) {
             isInterestingActivityVisible = false;
        }
    }

    // Other state change callback stubs
    ....
}