How to display a Dialog from a Service?

android service dialog
Filip Majernik picture Filip Majernik · Oct 27, 2011 · Viewed 71.3k times · Source

I have read really a lot of posts about this topic, however nothing works for me (or doesn't have the effect I wish).

I have a an application, that after logging in starts a background Service (implementation of the Service class). This service syncs itself with a Server and if a new order comes, it creates a notification.

So far, everything works great, I have the notification and the Toast message. However, I would like to have a dialog, that notifies the user about the new order.

As I understood, you can start an activity from within the service, which displays the dialog. This works, but the activity starts on top of the current activity stack and displays the dialog. I have an activity with no view attached and it correctly displays the dialog, however, on a black background.

What I want is to display the dialog on the current activity, causing the actual background(the running activity) to fade and display the dialog.

Is this somehow possible?

Answer

chakrapani picture chakrapani · Oct 9, 2013

We can show dialog from service only if it is a system alert dialog. So, set TYPE_SYSTEM_ALERT window layout parameter to Dialog as follows:

dialog.getWindow().setType(WindowManager.LayoutParams.TYPE_SYSTEM_ALERT);

But, it needs SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW permission. So, don't forget to add this permissin in Manifest file.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW"/>

Edit: Better option to show dialog is to start activity as one of the below ways.

  1. Start Activity with Dialog Theme (android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Dialog") -(or)
  2. Start Translucent Activity and show Dialog in it.

Note: You should add Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK to intent

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