How to check the HDMI device connection status in Android?

I came out with this eventually. It's working on S3 and S4. It should work with any 4+ Android version.

public class HdmiListener extends BroadcastReceiver {

    private static String HDMIINTENT = "android.intent.action.HDMI_PLUGGED";

    @Override
    public void onReceive(Context ctxt, Intent receivedIt) {
        String action = receivedIt.getAction();

        if (action.equals(HDMIINTENT)) {
            boolean state = receivedIt.getBooleanExtra("state", false);

            if (state) {
                Log.d("HDMIListner", "BroadcastReceiver.onReceive() : Connected HDMI-TV");
                Toast.makeText(ctxt, "HDMI >>", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();    
            } else {
                Log.d("HDMIListner", "HDMI >>: Disconnected HDMI-TV");
                Toast.makeText(ctxt, "HDMI DisConnected>>", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
            }
        }
    }
}

AndroidManifest.xml needs this into application tag:

    <receiver android:name="__com.example.android__.HdmiListener" >
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.HDMI_PLUGGED" />
        </intent-filter>
    </receiver>

I came up with this using the other answers and some from elsewhere:

/**
 * Checks device switch files to see if an HDMI device/MHL device is plugged in, returning true if so.
 */
private boolean isHdmiSwitchSet() {

    // The file '/sys/devices/virtual/switch/hdmi/state' holds an int -- if it's 1 then an HDMI device is connected.
    // An alternative file to check is '/sys/class/switch/hdmi/state' which exists instead on certain devices.
    File switchFile = new File("/sys/devices/virtual/switch/hdmi/state");
    if (!switchFile.exists()) {
        switchFile = new File("/sys/class/switch/hdmi/state");
    }
    try {
        Scanner switchFileScanner = new Scanner(switchFile);
        int switchValue = switchFileScanner.nextInt();
        switchFileScanner.close();
        return switchValue > 0;
    } catch (Exception e) {
        return false;
    }
}

If you're checking often, you'd want to store the result and update it with @hamen's listener.


You can get the data from /sys/class/display/display0.hdmi/connect. If the content of the file is 0, HDMI is not connected, otherwise if it's 1, HDMI is connected.

try {
    File file = new File("/sys/class/display/display0.hdmi/connect");
    InputStream in = new FileInputStream(file);
    byte[] re = new byte[32768];
    int read = 0;
    while ((read = in.read(re, 0, 32768)) != -1) {
        String string = new String(re, 0, read);
        Log.v("String_whilecondition", "HDMI state = " + string);
        result = string;
    }
    in.close();
} catch (IOException ex) {
    ex.printStackTrace();
}