Determining the current foreground application from a background task or service

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" />

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;
}

Try the following code:

ActivityManager activityManager = (ActivityManager) newContext.getSystemService( Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE );
List<RunningAppProcessInfo> appProcesses = activityManager.getRunningAppProcesses();
for(RunningAppProcessInfo appProcess : appProcesses){
    if(appProcess.importance == RunningAppProcessInfo.IMPORTANCE_FOREGROUND){
        Log.i("Foreground App", appProcess.processName);
    }
}

Process name is the package name of the app running in foreground. Compare it to the package name of your application. If it is the same then your application is running on foreground.

I hope this answers your question.