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

How to Update the Android UI in an AsyncTask

Instead of using the Looper in your AsyncTask I recommend that you use Activity.runOnUiThread() to update the UI for methods of your ProgressDialog such as show() and dismiss().

Example:

runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
    @Override
        public void run() {
        progress.dismiss();       
    }
});

If your Context c, above, is an Activity context, you can use it to access runOnUiThread():

    c.runOnUiThread()...

You may have to make an Activity available to your processing class via various methods such as passing it into your execute() method or using an Android Application instance.

Otherwise, you can use a regular Context, but the same Runnable above will have to execute in a Thread or Task.