The Android Lifecycle cheat sheet — part IV : ViewModels, Translucent Activities...

ViewModels

The lifecycle of ViewModel s is quite simple: they have only one callback: onCleared . However, there’s a difference between scoping to an activity or to a fragment:

ViewModel scoping

Note that the initialization happens whenever you obtain the ViewModel , which is normally done in onCreate .

:arrow_down: Download ViewModels diagram

Translucent Activities

Translucent activities have translucent (usually transparent) backgrounds so the user can still see what’s underneath.

When the property android:windowIsTranslucent is applied to an activity’s theme, the diagram changes slightly: the background activity is never stopped, only paused, so it can continue receiving UI updates:

Comparison between regular and translucent activities

Also, when coming back to a task, both activities are restored and started, and only the translucent is resumed:

Pressing home and coming back to an app with a translucent activity

:arrow_down: Download Translucent activities diagram

Launch Modes

The recommended way to deal with tasks and the back stack is, basically: don’t — you should adopt the default behavior. For more details, read Ian Lake’s post about this topic:Tasks and Back Stack.

If you really need to use SINGLE_TOP , here’s its diagram:

Single Top behavior

For the sake of comparison, here’s what singleTask would look like (but you probably shouldn’t use it):

Single Task

Note: If you use Jetpack’s Navigation Architecture Component , you will benefit from Single Top support and automatic synthetic back stack.

:arrow_down: Download launch modes diagram