Answer by 18446744073709551615 for Android method that shows ProgressDialog, runs worker and waits for worker finish

First of all, the thread stored into the main variable is not the main (a.k.a. UI) thread.

As to runOnUIThread(), you can have a Handler created on the UI thread, post(Runnable r) and postDelayed(Runnable r, long delayMillis) will replace runOnUIThread(). [Alternatively, your function already does have a Context parameter; you could require it to be an Activity.]

Note also that in Android 2 initializing the AsyncTask class on the thread other than the UI thread leads to an error.

Finally, why do you need a separate thread if you are using AsyncTask? Or why AsyncTask if you already have a worker thread? You definitely do not need both of them.