Android - Very slow finishing of an activity

Issue

I have a "Close" button which closes the application. I have tried 2 methods but they both are very slow.

1. Finishing the activity:

activity.finish()

2. Sending Home Page intent (from here)

Intent startMain = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN);
startMain.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_HOME);
startMain.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
startActivity(startMain);

How can I close the activity or send it to the background faster? Why clicking on the "home" button is much faster than sending ACTION_MAIN intent?

Solution

Pressing the HOME Button will call onPause() on the current Activity. Thus it's not closing the app in total but pause it.

Ergo: It is of course much faster even in starting because it keeps the memory.

Now you know how to pause the app instead of closing if you want to have a fast approach.

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If you want to close the whole app I would suggest to use finishAndRemoveTask();

Finishes all activities in this task and removes it from the recent tasks list.

Note: BACK Button will call onDestroy() if you want to have another way. Try out what fits best for your usage.

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CODE EXAMPLE

Close app like HOME Button programmatically without a transparent View using a Button:

Button close = findViewById(R.id.myCloseButton);
        close.setOnClickListener(view -> {
            finishAffinity();
        });

Answered By - Etienne Kaiser