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Restart app from launch screen instead of resuming

I have an application with basically a list of items and a detail screen for each items.
When initially started, we show the list of items. If the user switches to another app when viewing a details screen, when he comes back to the app, the details screen is shown.
All that is the standard, and working well. However, my client needs the user to come back to the list screen instead of the details screen each time the app is resumed.
My first idea would be to remember the time at which the details activity got paused, and when started, if the time is greater than X seconds, finish and launch list activity instead of resuming.
Any more reliable way to do that?
PS: I know we should not do that, I already explained that to my client, decision is not mine.

Use SharedPreference to save the time of your paused detail activity in onPause and when it resume check the saved time with current time whether it has passed your threshold if it is passed then close it otherwise remain it opened.

Implement this solution and it definitely helps.
Basically, the app is not actually restarting completely, but your launch Activity is being started and added to the top of the Activity stack when the app is being resumed by the launcher. You can confirm this is the case by clicking the back button when you resume the app and are shown the launch Activity. You should then be brought to the Activity that you expected to be shown when you resumed the app.
The workaround I chose to implement to resolve this issue is to check for the Intent.CATEGORY_LAUNCHER category and Intent.ACTION_MAIN action in the intent that starts the initial Activity. If those two flags are present and the Activity is not at the root of the task (meaning the app was already running), then I call finish() on the initial Activity. That exact solution may not work for you, but something similar should.
Here is what I do in onCreate() of the initial/launch Activity:
if (!isTaskRoot()
&& getIntent().hasCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_LAUNCHER)
&& getIntent().getAction() != null
&& getIntent().getAction().equals(Intent.ACTION_MAIN)) {
finish();
return;
}
for more details on isTaskRoot()method reference.

You have to provide the following onPause() method to all the activity classes except your list_item activity(Initial Activity).
#Override
protected void onPause() {
super.onPause();
Intent i = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), list_item_activity.class);
startActivity(i);
}

I might understand your problem incorrectly but why you do all the timing stuff? I mean, assuming you've fragments for your list and detail views, just put a a flag to monitor your activity has stopped and listen to catch your activity resume ( via onResume or onWindowFocusChanged ). If it's stopped and resumed then transition to list fragment if it's not already visible.

You can you a broadcast receiver here.
And on activity OnResume method use a call to broadcast receiver and perform whatever you need like this.
#Override
protected void onResume() {
super.onResume();
sendBroadcast(new Intent("YourActionHere"));
}

Android how can i Detect If OnResume Is Because Back Button on Because rel lunching the app

i'm trying to show an add on my app .
i want to show the add every time that the user launches the app or if the app is in the background when the user relaunch it.
i added the function that shows the add in the onRestart() event and it seems to work fine.
my problem is that if the user goes back to a previous activity by pressing the android Back button it triggers the onRestart() event as well.
is it possible to determine if the activity was loaded by the back button?
Thanks alot
Avi

From what I understand, here is what you can do:
If you are starting an activity from another activity, instead of calling startActivity(), use startActivityForResult(). In the called Activity, override the onBackPressed(). Put some data in the returned intent and call super.onBackPressed(). In the caller activity you will then analyze this to know that back was pressed :)
Also, move the advertisement to the onResume() method which is called when the Avtivity becomes visible to the user.

I suggest you to put your add in the Onresume() method of your main activity;)

how to get notified by back-button pressed without override OS methods?

I am asking how can my activity get notified that the back button has been pressed.
I know that I can override onBackPressed or onKeyEvenet accroding to this blog post
but i think this is not optimized way to do so, since I have to restart the previous activity my-self while the OS is already doing this for me.
I just need to be notified that back button is pressed to set a flag to be true where I can use this flag later to know if the hardware back button has been pressed or not

but i think this is not optimized way to do so, since I have to restart the previous activity my-self
This is the best way to override the back button I know of, however that blog doesn't explicitly say you can call the super method... Have you tried this?
#Override
public void onBackPressed() {
// Set your flag here
super.onBackPressed();
}

How to tell when the user is not focused on this activity?

I wasn't exactly sure how to word this question, but I know it's a very simple one to answer. How can tell when the user is no longer on the activity I want the user to be on. For example, how do I know if the user has unexpectedly pressed HOME or if a phone call is received and interrupts the current activity?

You can check if your Activity has focus with this method:
hasWindowFocus()
If you want to capture when the user leaves the activity, you'd want implement this in your Activity:
protected void onPause() {
super.onPause();
// Code here...
}
Also there is more info about activity life cycle here:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Activity.html

Check the Activity life cycle:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Activity.html#ActivityLifecycle
If the user leaves the Activity for any reason, onPause() will be called.

Does pressing Back always cause Activity to finish()?

I've heard that pressing the back button will essentially cause the current Activity to finish(). Is this always the case? Seems like it would be with the way it pops the Activity off the stack.
The one situation I'm not so sure about is when the root Activity in a Task has back pressed. I'm currently experiencing a very weird effect, described as follows:
On loading my application, the first Activity is for initialization, and once it finishes, it calls my main Activity (a TabActivity). This first init activity has android:noHistory="true" set in the Manifest so pressing Back from my main Activity won't go back to that. It goes to the Launcher. When I click on my App in the Launcher a second time, the initialization activity loads again, and loads the main Activity when done. Almost immediately after, it loads a second instance of my main Activity. But ONLY after the Application has already been run once, and was exited by pressing BACK from the main Activity. It does it every subsequent time until I force quit the app or load a new version from the IDE.
Based on this, I am suspecting some kind of Activity instance is lying around and being reused, since it only happens on the second+ time I run the application (and exit with BACK -- using HOME just returns to the last state of the app, no big deal). Anyone have any thoughts??

I've heard that pressing the back button will essentially cause the current Activity to finish(). Is this always the case?
No it is not. The most activities have this behaviour but not all. For example you could create a Dialog and set it setCancelable(false) and it won't close if you click BACK button.
Furthermore you could customize activity behaviour on BACK button pressed by overriding onBackPressed
Called when the activity has detected the user's press of the back key. The default implementation simply finishes the current activity, but you can override this to do whatever you want.
About your application behaviour..Did you verify if the activity launcher is finished after it loads your main activity? I mean if the onDestroy() method is called. Maybe after it runs the main activity it remains there and when you click back you just go back to the old Launcher...
hope this helps..

Read through the Activity and Task design guidelines on the Android developer site; they explain how the Home and Back buttons work. Obviously, if you override the default behavior (as mentioned by hara above), the back button will not finish the activity.
On your specific issue, check your logcat. You should be able to see there whether it is bringing an old process back to life or starting up a new one. If that is unclear, insert a couple of log statements into onCreate, onPause, onDestroyed, etc., so that you can see exactly what is happening with your process.

You can control BACK-BUTTON by writing the following code.
public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event)
{
if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_BACK ) {
//preventing default implementation previous to
//android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.ECLAIR
return false;
}
return super.onKeyDown(keyCode, event);
}

Are you running your activities with any special flags, such as singleInstance or singleTop? Those could be causing the oddities you're seeing. The easiest way to track down what's causing your problem is to absolutely fill it with debugging messages. For example:
In your initialisation activity, add a log in the beginning of onCreate to get the name of the activity such as this.toString(). More on why you want this line later.
When it launches the main tabbed activity, get the name of the launching activity and a message saying it's launched the tabbed one.
Override the onPause(), onStop() and onDestroy() callbacks and add debugging lines with this.toString() and also a message telling you which callback it is.
What this will do is tell you whether you've got multiple instances of the initialisation activity lying around. To this by comparing the name of the activities calling your main activity with the ones that were just created and the ones that went through to onDestroy.
If you don't know how to debug, use Log.d(LOG_TAG, "Your message here");. And then define a constant LOG_TAG String somewhere. After that, show the LogCat perspective in Eclispe by going to Window, show perspective (or view, don't remember exactly), other, Android, LogCat. The purpose of having a LOG_TAG constant is that you can set up LogCat to filter to that String and only show you those messages. It will make it easier to see them among the mass of system log messages.

The short answer to the original question is 'no'. This is largely because, unfortunately, not every developer follows the guidelines referenced by previous answers.
Yet the guidleines themselves mention exceptions, when the Back key should not call finish(). the most prominent exception is the Web browser, which has its own "back stack" for each window, so it must have its own custom handling of the Back key.

If there are no fragments on the back stack and a developer has not overridden onBackPressed, the activity will finish when the back button is pressed.
Here is the source code for Android 4.4.2 Activity.onBackPressed():
public void onBackPressed() {
if (!mFragments.popBackStackImmediate()) {
finish();
}
}

just override onbackpressed().. on back press this method will get execute remove super and do what u want to do.