Interrupting from background

Context

UI

Affects

User Experience,User Conformity

Problem

It is a bad smell to start activities from BroadcastRecievers or Services that work in the background. Imagine a user that writes a SMS and gets interrupted by another apps activity that just started. The worse: this annoying app catches some of the input.

Refactorings

Remove startActivity() from background

Resolves

User Experience,User Conformity

Affects

Solution

BroadcastRecievers and Services should not call startActivity(). Just inform the user that something happens. Use Notifications instead.

Links

• Don't interrupt the user

Related

• Dropped Data
• Public data
• Network & IO operations in main thread
• Not descriptive UI
• Prohibited data transfer
• Bulk data transfer on slow network
• Set config changes
• Tracking Hardware Id
• Uncontrolled focus order
• Unnecessary permission
• Untouchable

by Martin Brylski 2013