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In detail, I want to know if it's possible to take the output from a running Android app and pipe it to the to the background of the display. In other words, have the background wallpaper update itself dynamically.

dland
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yuval bar
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  • how would one interact with your app when there are icons and widgets ontop of it? – tyczj Oct 15 '14 at 14:15
  • Your question doesn't make much sense, please clarify what you are trying to achieve – Kai Oct 15 '14 at 14:17
  • Did You try to set Your application as "launcher app" ? perhaps this is, what You might really want. – icbytes Oct 15 '14 at 14:21

1 Answers1

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No you can't do it this way. The reason is because Android starts your app with an activity (unless your app is just made up of services to run in the background for other apps to call). Whenever your activity starts, it comes to the foreground and receives user focus. The Android documentation states that if the user performs an action that starts another activity or switches to a different app, the system calls another set of lifecycle methods on your activity as it moves to the background. At this point, the activity is no longer visible.

The closest concept to what you are trying to do is a live wallpaper but that is a service and is a different paradigm.

ucsunil
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  • Note that being visible and being on top are not quite the same thing - ie, there's a different between onStart/onStop and onResume/onPause. You can, for example, have a transparent Activity on top of another that it is still running and displaying, although technically "paused". But this does require that everything involved be designed to cooperate in this way. – Chris Stratton Oct 15 '14 at 15:32