Refreshing GUI by another thread in java (swing)

If you make the status field thread safe, then you can call setStatus directly from your background thread. To make the status thread-safe, put changes in a synchronize block, and make the variable volatile so updates on other threads become visible.

E.g.

public class Frame extends JFrame implements Runnable {
private volatile Status status = 1;
...
@Override
public void run() {
    switch (status) {
        case 1:
        ...
        case 2:
        ...
}

public void updateGUI(Status status) {
   setStatus(status);
   SwingUtilities.invokeLater(this);
}

private synchronized void setStatus(Status status) {
   this.status = status;
}

With these changes in place, it's ok to call setStatus from any thread.

Here is a little snippet you can add to a method to ensure it executes in the the GUI thread. It relies on isEventDispatchThread().

public void updateGUI(final Status status) {
   if (!SwingUtilities.isEventDispatchThread()) {
     SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
       @Override
       public void run() {
          updateGUI(status);
       }
     });
     return;
   }
   //Now edit your gui objects
   ...
}