How to finish current activity in Android

If you are doing a loading screen, just set the parameter to not keep it in activity stack. In your manifest.xml, where you define your activity do:

<activity android:name=".LoadingScreen" android:noHistory="true" ... />

And in your code there is no need to call .finish() anymore. Just do startActivity(i);

There is also no need to keep a instance of your current activity in a separate field. You can always access it like LoadingScreen.this.doSomething() instead of private LoadingScreen loadingScreen;

You need to call finish() from the UI thread, not a background thread. The way to do this is to declare a Handler and ask the Handler to run a Runnable on the UI thread. For example:

public class LoadingScreen extends Activity{
    private LoadingScreen loadingScreen;
    Intent i = new Intent(this, HomeScreen.class);
    Handler handler;
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        handler = new Handler();
        setContentView(R.layout.loading);

        CountDownTimer timer = new CountDownTimer(10000, 1000) //10seceonds Timer
        {
             @Override
             public void onTick(long l) 
             {

             }

             @Override
             public void onFinish() 
             {
                 handler.post(new Runnable() {
                     public void run() {
                         loadingScreen.finishActivity(0);
                         startActivity(i);
                     }
                 });
             };
        }.start();
    }
}

When you want start a new activity and finish the current activity you can do this:

API 11 or greater

Intent intent = new Intent(OldActivity.this, NewActivity.class);
intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TASK);
startActivity(intent);

API 10 or lower

Intent intent = new Intent(OldActivity.this, NewActivity.class);
intent.setFlags(IntentCompat.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | IntentCompat.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TASK);
startActivity(intent);

I hope this can help somebody =)

I tried using this example but it failed miserably. Every time I use to invoke finish()/ finishactivity() inside a handler, I end up with this menacing java.lang.IllegalAccess Exception. i'm not sure how did it work for the one who posed the question.

Instead the solution I found was that create a method in your activity such as

void kill_activity()
{ 
    finish();
}

Invoke this method from inside the run method of the handler. This worked like a charm for me. Hope this helps anyone struggling with "how to close an activity from a different thread?".