Check if access to WatchUi is permitted?

What I do is this:

(:background)
function isRunningInForeground() as Boolean {
    return $ has :getApp;
}

function getApp() as MyApp {
    return Application.getApp() as MyApp;
}

Instead of getApp you can use any class, function that you only need in foreground and isn't annotated with (:background)

Thanks, that's a good idea!

Btw, what is the purpose of this getApp() function? I saw it in some examples, but in others it is not there. I did not include it in my app, and it seems to work fine without it.

In some apps I don't need it. Here I use it as: 

Understood, thanks!

Understand that your AppBase runs for both the main app and the background service, while some of the functions are called for both (initialize(), onStart(), onStop() for example), some only for the main app (getInitialView(), onSettingsChanged(), onBackgroundData() for example) and some only for the background (getServiceDelegate for example.

Class and even global variables are not shared between the main app and the background.  They each have their own copy.  So what you can do is have a variable

var inBackground=false;

and then in getServiceDelegate(), set

inBackground=true;

You can then check inBackground to see if you are running in the main app or a background service. 

One place I'll use this in in onStop().  For example, if the main app is exiting, I may want to do a deleteTemporalEvent(), but I don't want to do that if it's the background service that's ending.

In this thread from years ago I posted a very simple sample that shows a variation on this.

https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/5287/very-simple-sample-of-a-watch-face-with-a-background-process

Thanks, I came to the same conclusion and implemented it like this:

(:background :glance) class myApp extends Application.AppBase {
    private static var _isInBackground = false;
    static function isInBackground() as Boolean { return _isInBackground; }

    function getServiceDelegate() {  
        _isInBackground = true;
        // other code
    }    
}

Note to myself: I am still following old habits. In context of Monkey C, the isInBackground() function is probably a waste of code space and I should access the variable directly ...

on some newer devices, you can check what's passed to onStart, but doing it this way works on all devices, even if they don't support backgrounding.

And remember, as AppBase is used by both the main app as well as the background service, it's size impacts how much memory is left for the background service, so you want to keep your AppBase as small as you can.

Here's a blog post I did on backgrounding when it was first introduced:

https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/connect-iq-faq/how-do-i-create-a-connect-iq-background-service/#howdoicreateaconnectiqbackgroundservice

Understood, and thanks for the link!