Android :: How To Control Activity Flow - Back Button Versus Home Button
Sep 2, 2010
I have 3 activities in my app: Activity1 -> Activity2 -> Activity3. Inside Activity3, if the user presses Back, I would like to return to Activity2. In Activity3's onPause event, I added a finish() statement. That's probably not even necessary, but I wanted to make sure this Activity gets cleaned up. This works fine.
However, while in Activity3, if the user presses Home or starts a new app (through notification bar or some other means), I want both Activity3 and Activity2 to finish. If the user returns to this app, he should resume with Activity1.
I have figured out how to do one or the other, but I can't figure out how to handle both cases, if it's even possible. Can I trap the "Back" button in Activity3 and send a message back to Activity2 telling it not to finish()? It seems like the Activities follow the same lifecycle flow (Pause, Stop) regardless of what you do to send them to the background. Just to answer the question of why I want this behavior, imagine that Activity1 is a login screen, Activity2 is a selection screen, and Activity3 is a content screen. If I press Back from the content page, I want to be able to make a new selection. If I exit via any other means (Home, notification bar), I want the user to be "logged out".
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Oct 4, 2010
My activity has a set of buttons on the left half of the screen and a ListView on the right.Initially the focus is on the first button. When I browse the buttons by pressing DOWN arrow key and then press the RIGHT arrow key, the focus does not go to the topmost list item. Instead, the list item correspondingly on the right gets focused.Is there a way that when I press the RIGHT arrow key, the focus goes to the topmost item on the Listview?
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May 6, 2009
Whenever I press the home button when Im in the root task of my application and when I click on the icon of my app again the state of my task (activity) is retained, but when i press the back button on the emulator and when I open my application its state is not retained. I want the state to be retained in both the scenarios.
In the mnifest I have given the below entries,
android:alwaysRetainTaskState="true" for the root activity
android:launchMode="singleTask" for the application
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Aug 12, 2009
I want to get the Text data value from Sub-Activity back. And everything is ok. But when the Sub-activity was opened, then I just click back "button" on the phone, it throw an exception error. I found on the android NotePad life-cycle control toturial but It's hard to understand. Can someone help me? This is my code:
public class SBooks extends ListActivity {
private String title_raw;
private SBooksDbAdapter mDbHelper;private static final int ACTIVITY_SEARCH = 0;private static final int SEARCH_ID = Menu.FIRST; @Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.sbooks_list);
mDbHelper = new SBooksDbAdapter(this);
mDbHelper.open();
Create Menu Option
@Override public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
boolean result = super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
menu.add(0, SEARCH_ID, 0, R.string.menu_search);
return result;
@Override
public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
switch(item.getItemId()){
case SEARCH_ID:
Intent intent = new Intent(this, SBooksSearch.class);
startActivityForResult(intent, ACTIVITY_SEARCH);
return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
@Override
protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent intent){
super.onActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, intent);
switch(requestCode){
case ACTIVITY_SEARCH:
Bundle bundle = intent.getExtras();
title_raw = bundle.getString(SBooksDbAdapter.KEY_TITLE_RAW);
if(title_raw!=null){
Cursor cursor = mDbHelper.searchData(title_raw);
String[] from = new String[]{ SBooksDbAdapter.KEY_ROWID,
SBooksDbAdapter.KEY_TITLE, SBooksDbAdapter.KEY_LYRICS };
int[] to = new int[]{ R.id.id, R.id.title, R.id.lyrics };
SimpleCursorAdapter adapter =
new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, R.layout.sbooks_row, cursor, from, to );
setListAdapter(adapter);This is my Sub-Activity:
public class SBooksSearch extends Activity {
private EditText mTextSearch;
private Button searchButton;
private SBooksDbAdapter mDbHelper;
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.sbooks_search);
mTextSearch = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.text_search);
searchButton = (Button)findViewById(R.id.btn_search);
searchButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener(){
public void onClick(View v){
Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.putExtra(SBooksDbAdapter.KEY_TITLE_RAW, mTextSearch.getText().toString());
setResult(RESULT_OK, intent);
finish();
@Override
protected void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState){
super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
@Override
protected void onPause(){
super.onPause();
checkState();
@Override
protected void onResume(){
super.onResume();
}private void checkState() {
This is Logcat:
08-12 18:44:39.211: WARN/InputManagerService(581): Starting input on non-focused client com.android.internal.view.IInputMethodClient$Stub$Proxy@43719140 (uid=10004 pid=623)
08-12 18:44:39.510: INFO/ActivityManager(581): Displayed activity com.original.sbooks/.SBooks: 4934 ms
08-12 18:44:40.821: WARN/KeyCharacterMap(730): No keyboard for id 0
08-12 18:44:40.821: WARN/KeyCharacterMap(730): Using default keymap: /system/usr/keychars/qwerty.kcm.bin
08-12 18:44:41.412: INFO/ARMAssembler(581): generated scanline__00000177:03515104_00001A01_00000000 [ 64 ipp] (89 ins) at [0x297608:0x29776c] in 952924 ns
08-12 18:44:41.520: INFO/ARMAssembler(581): generated scanline__00000177:03515104_00000A01_00000000 [ 46 ipp] (70 ins) at [0x297798:0x2978b0] in 517061 ns
08-12 18:44:42.171: INFO/ActivityManager(581): Starting activity: Intent { comp={com.original.sbooks/com.original.sbooks.SBooksSearch} }
08-12 18:44:52.196: WARN/ActivityManager(581): Launch timeout has expired, giving up wake lock!
08-12 18:44:52.279: WARN/ActivityManager(581): Activity idle timeout for HistoryRecord{436bfc80 {com.original.sbooks/com.original.sbooks.SBooksSearch}}
08-12 18:44:57.350: DEBUG/dalvikvm(620): GC freed 4103 objects / 231808 bytes in 75ms
08-12 18:45:05.130: DEBUG/dalvikvm(649): GC freed 2604 objects / 150112 bytes in 88ms
08-12 18:45:10.120: DEBUG/dalvikvm(623): GC freed 2750 objects / 149592 bytes in 71ms
08-12 18:45:11.920: INFO/ActivityManager(581): Displayed activity com.original.sbooks/.SBooksSearch: 29748 ms
08-12 18:45:17.263: WARN/ActivityManager(581): Activity pause timeout for HistoryRecord{436bfc80 {com.original.sbooks/com.original.sbooks.SBooksSearch}}
08-12 18:45:26.762: WARN/ActivityManager(581): Launch timeout has expired, giving up wake lock!
08-12 18:45:27.272: WARN/ActivityManager(581): Activity idle timeout for HistoryRecord{435a7760 {com.original.sbooks/com.original.sbooks.SBooks}}
08-12 18:46:04.905: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(730): Shutting down VM
08-12 18:46:04.905: WARN/dalvikvm(730): threadid=3: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x4000fe70)
08-12 18:46:04.905: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): Uncaught handler: thread main exiting due to uncaught exception
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): java.lang.RuntimeException: Failure delivering result ResultInfo{who=null, request=0, result=0, data=null} to activity {com.original.sbooks/com.original.sbooks.SBooks}: java.lang.NullPointerException
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at android.app.ActivityThread.deliverResults(ActivityThread.java:3005)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleSendResult(ActivityThread.java:3047)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$2300(ActivityThread.java:112)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1721)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:123)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3948)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:782)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:540)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at com.original.sbooks.SBooks.onActivityResult(SBooks.java:111)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at android.app.Activity.dispatchActivityResult(Activity.java:3595)
08-12 18:46:04.991: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(730): at android.app.ActivityThread.deliverResults(ActivityThread.java:3001)
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Sep 1, 2009
Trying to the do as the title describes with the following code, but it doesn't seem to work. It just does nothing once i have altered the keyCode. Do i have to do something to the event?
..............
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Jan 4, 2010
On pressing the back button, I'd like my application to go into the stopped state, rather than the destroyed state. In the Android docs it states: not all activities have the behavior that they are destroyed when BACK is pressed. When the user starts playing music in the Music application and then presses BACK, the application overrides the normal back behavior, preventing the player activity from being destroyed, and continues playing music, even though its activity is no longer visible
How do I replicate this functionality in my own application? I think there must be three possibilities.
1) Capture the back button press (as below) and then call whatever method(s) the home button calls...........
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Sep 22, 2009
I'm working on an android application that plays video, by using an intent:tostart = new Intent(Intent. ACTION_ VIEW);tostart.setDataAndType(Uri.parse(movieurl), "video/*");startActivity(tostart);This works great. However, when you press the back button (on the device), the movieplayer goes back to the beginning of the movie. Only when you press back again, it goes back to my application. While the current behaviour makes some sense, I would like to know if I can change it: Is is possible to directly go back after pressing back?
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Mar 30, 2010
Whenever I am using any app and press the home button, the home screen blacks out for a few secs and it takes around 10 sec to get all the icons back and before I can start using my phone again. I am using a non rooted mytouch 3g.
This problem does not happen if I exit an app by pressing the back button. It becomes very annoying at times.
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Jul 4, 2010
This has been brought up before, but I was unable to find a satisfying answer. And I know it's a newbish question.
What is the difference between exiting an app with the back button compared to the home button? I am not talking about switching to the home screen, I am talking about a scenario when you want to exit an app. For example, you play a game, you're done - do you press home or back? Or, you're in the Facebook app and you want to exit to the homescreen - what do you press - back or home? At first, I thought both buttons do the same with the difference that home brings you to the homescreen instantly while back goes through your previous steps/pages/screens in the current app and then returns you the homescreen.
But later I noticed that 'reactivating' some apps that were exited via the back button cause them to 'reload' (the loading screen shows up - with certain games, grooveshark's loading screen, etc.) while they switch back instantly when "exited" with the home button.
I gather the way to 'leave' an app you don't plan on using for at least a short while (I am not talking about closing the app, I know it's up to Android, or some task-killer) is the back button, while home is more for task switching/starting new apps while old ones are running.
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Aug 25, 2010
I was wondering how or if it is possible to exclude activities from the back buttons history list? For example not letting the user back into the Splash Screen?
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Nov 2, 2010
on the ui i am having a back button displayed. there are three activities say A,B,C. Activity A is splash screen. Activity B is home screen. Activity C is edit screen. on edit screen only i am having a back button. when the user press that i open the activity B which also contains some sort of http request and response. i want that the previous activity from stack should get displayed? how can i achieve that? i am able to open previous activity on pressing the back button of device? when i press back button on device there doesnt goes any http request? i want to achieve this behaviour when i press the ui back button.
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Aug 17, 2010
My app chains some activities.
if you press the back button, you go back through old activities then you suddenly quit the application !
so I need to show a message like "do you really want to exit" if it's the last activity on stack
I know how to override the back button but i can't figure how to know how many activity are in history
CODE:..................
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Jun 14, 2010
Does simply pressing the back or home button actually close the the running app? If I press the back button in mail for instance the phone returns to the home screen but if I then press the Mail button again the mail will open rite where I left off at not on the Mail home screen. this happens with all the apps.
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Sep 23, 2010
I am trying to solve an issue sort of similar to what was done here (link text)Except in my case where Activity A, started Activity B, started Activity C, when the user resumes the app after pressing the home button - I want C, the last Activity, to be displayed. Instead what is happening is I am back to A.Also on a side note I have discovered that even when I exit the application, if I hold down the Home button, my app is still listed as an active app even though in the LogCat I can see that it exited OK.Also, in case it matters, I did recently add android:launchMode ="singleTask" in order to make some notification logic work correctly. I was seeing the Home button behavior before that though.
Activity B actually has several Activities that it chooses from (it has a list of Intents) to display based on input it receives but launches them all the same way as Activty A launched B. Once the first Activity is displayed the user swipe the screen to navigate to the left or right screen. When the user swipes left or right, the current activity puts info in its return Intent that Activity B uses to display the next Activity. Also since logic outside of the user's control could prompt a change in the screen displayed, each Activty calls finish on itself in onStop to avoid back-button issues.
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Jan 23, 2010
I'm experiencing kind of strange behavior of my application after hard Home button is pressed. When you press Home, everything is OK - my app goes to the background, showing Home screen. But if you try to choose my app in the main menu or in the list of last tasks it behaves like it was not started before and does not show the last activity you were on - it just starts from scratch, namely, shows the splash screen and starts next corresponding activities. Moreover, old activities of this app remain on the activities stack, and previous instance of the app is not terminated - so if you press Back for a few times you'll just run into those activities which were undoubtedly started during the previous session of work with my app. Splash screen activity is filtered by "android.intent.action.MAIN" filter and "android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" category. The strange thing is that all of that happens despite the fact that I do not intercept any Back key hits, or override any onPause or onResume methods. What's happening contradicts with my understanding of Android app lifecycle - I was sure that when you hit Home an app just goes to the background, and when you choose it in the menu later - it just unwinds and does not start anew. (Of course, unless stuff like that is stated in the app manifest or corresponding methods are overridden or something else). I also checked it for some other lifecycle events - such as changing orientation or flipping hard keyboard out - and none of those led to such strange results. It appears that the problem occurs when you try to start the app from main menu or menu of last applications.
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Jun 25, 2010
I am writing a count down timer, using .postdelayed(), that speaks each second as the timer goes down to zero. I have trouble understanding the consequences of the user hitting the back or home button.
The countdown continues when hitting either button. When home is pressed and you reclick the app, it goes back to the same count(this is what i always want) and continues to count down. When you hit the back key and then reclick the app, you get a new clock that has not started but I still here the sounds from the original timer. How can I code an app so it only can have one instance and chicking the app icon will always go to the active version if it is running?
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Sep 12, 2010
When I press back or home in my application, it hides, but the MediaPlayer keeps going. Is there a way to know when these buttons have been pressed and stop playback before closing?
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Oct 22, 2009
I am starting an external activity from my application and would like the back button to return the user to the point in my application where they started the activity. is this possible?
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Feb 28, 2009
In my game, I've got one activity starting another activity via an intent. When the user is finished with the second activity, they quit it using the back button. However, I have a problem: when this happens, the second activity is still running, even if it's quit with the back button.
My second activity will eventually give a "game over" message using a pop up window if there is no user input for a period of time. Problem is, when I back out of the second activity (where the game is happening) the "game over" message still appears eventually. This is how I know the second activity is still running. It even displays a "game over" message if my entire app is quit (on the Android OS).
How do I stop an activity completely when the user presses the back button?
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Aug 3, 2010
As an avid user of ADW and Launcherpro, I encountered some problems after the update to 2.2. For instance, If I switch to LauncherPro, and set it as default via "Home Switcher", the next time I hit the home button it still takes me back to Sense. The solution I found is this:
1. You cannot use Home Swithcer.
2. After uninstalling Home Switcher, go to Settings> Applications> Manage Applications.
3. Click the tab to show all, navigate to "HTC Sense", clear it's defaults.
4. Now, the next time you hit Home, it will ask what to do. Select the launcher of your choice and make it default.
From here out, you can use Home Switcher to launch a different launcher, but know that the "Set Default" action will not work for 2.2. You will have to clear default for whatever launcher in order for home to function properly for whatever launcher you choose.
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Feb 3, 2010
If I go to use the camera or am not careful in other apps, my hand touches one of these keys and I am exited from the app I was using. Is there any kind of skin to put on top of this until that would make these buttons available when I actually need to press them? Or is there some setting in the menus to disable them, or configure them?
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Jan 12, 2010
I open splash screen at the end i call finish() then i moved to browse page. At the browse page when i click on home button it hide the application.(b/c of Android's Multi tasking feature) When i go to Android's desktop launch application again it starts from splash screen. Android Platform 1.6
I open splash screen at the end i call finish() then i moved to browse page. At the browse page when i click on home button it hide the application.(b/c of Android's Multi tasking feature) When i go to Android's desktop launch application again it always starts from browse screen instead of splash screen why is that..............
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Aug 22, 2010
When the app starts up it shows the activity label property in the title bar. If you set a different title for the activity in onCreate that will show up later. You see the launcher activity title for a while and then the programmatic title replaces it, which is not very nice visually. The icon on the home screen uses the label for the activity. What I'm trying to do is get a label for the icon on the home screen that is different from the activity title bar. I tried setting the intent- filter label, but that didn't appear under the home screen icon. There is a label property for the application, the activity, and the intent-filter. The activity label is shown for the icon and the title and the other label properties are not shown.
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Nov 9, 2009
I am working on a device that does not have a hardware Home, Back or Menu button. I am trying to create a soft keyboard with only these three keys but I have not been able to get it working. Does anyone have any insight into my problem?
I first looked into injecting keypresses into a WindowManager but this functionality seems to have been removed.
I then looked at creating a custom soft keyboard but that will not work either. Custom soft keyboards only inject their input into the text fields they are attached to. I can't send a Home, Back or Menu keypress to the Android system.
I finally got the Home button working by using this intent to tell Android to go to the Home screen: Intent HomeIntent = new Intent(); HomeIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_MAIN); HomeIntent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_HOME);
Unfortunately, I have not found an Intent to send for Menu and Back.
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Sep 23, 2010
I would like to know how could i block the dial, home , back and the end call button on an android device.
I know this is possible because there is an application : TheftAware which does block all the buttons so they have no effect at all.
And I also would like to know how to make a dialog window or any kind of window which would stay on top no matter what (this is also done in theftaware).
They are also able to block(hide) the call screen... does someone know how are they doing that ?
Does all this means that android is not that secure after all ?
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Jul 4, 2010
I have two activities. The first is a list where the user selects one of the items which takes them to a second activity showing the details of the item they selected. When the user clicks the back button I want the app to return to the first activity.
Is there anything special i need to do to make this happen?
Right now when I click the back button from the second activity it exits the app just like the home button would.
Here is how I am starting the Second Activity. startActivity(new Intent(getApplication(), SecondActivity.class)); finish();
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May 5, 2010
I am writing a application where I am dealing with 4 activities, let's say A, B, C & D. Activity A invokes B, B invokes C, C invokes D. On each of the activity, I have a button called "home" button. When user clicks on home button in any of the B, C, D activities, application should go back to A activity screen ?
How to simulate "home" button in this case ?
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May 3, 2010
What I am trying to do is emulating the "Home" button which takes one back to Android's homescreen. So here is what causes me problems: I have 3 launcher activities. The first one (which is connected to the homescreen icon) is just a (password protected) configuration activity. It will not be used by the user (just admin) One of the other 2 (both accessed via an app widget) is a questionnaire app. I'm allowing to jump back between questions via the Back button or a GUI back button as well. When the questionnaire is finished I sum up the answers given and provide a "Finish" button which should take the user back to the home screen.
For the questionnaire app I use a single activity (called ItemActivity) which calls itself (is that recursion as well when using intents?) to jump from one question to another:
Questionnaire.serializeToXML();
Intent i = new Intent().setClass(c, ItemActivity.class);
if(Questionnaire.instance.getCurrentItemNo() == Questionnaire.instance.getAmountOfItems()) {
Questionnaire.instance.setCompleted(true);
} else Questionnaire.instance.nextItem();
startActivity(i);
The final screen shows something like "Thank you for participating" as well as the formerly described button which should take one back to the homescreen. But I don't really get how to exit the Activity properly. I've e.g. used this.finish(); but this strangely brings up the "Thank you" screen again. So how can I just exit by jumping back to the homescreen?
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Oct 24, 2009
I am having an issue related to home key . when i press home key all current activity gets hidden. but when i press the executable it again starts from the fisrt screen . I have overidden all methods nsaveInstaceState opPause onStop onResume
but there are still issues what is the right way to handle those conditions. When i am pressing home button i am storing the widgets state in database and when i again click the exectable i am checking the database state and starting the new Intent as saved when user presses the home button .Is it the right way to do that as i am facing the problem when user does the same and again presses the back button , there is already on intent available in stack of activity .
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Feb 19, 2010
I understand that trying to capture home button clicks is a hack, but I need to atleast close my current activity when the user clicks on home button. Is there anyway I can tell the system to close this activity is the user clicks on home button? If so how can I do that? I need to do it as I am listening for location updates and I want to stop the updates and also need to trash any location that was available to me previously. I need to do this just in case any user while in that activity clicks on home button and changes the location settings.
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