How to display a progress message aka "hourglass" in Android around long running tasks, really moving that long running tasks to a different thread but obstructing your activity with a curtain from progress so messages are processed and everything shows. Here is a snippet:

 ProgressDialog dialog = ProgressDialog.show(this, "Title",
  "Your message", true);
  final Handler handler = new Handler() {
     public void handleMessage(Message msg) {
           dialog.dismiss();
          
        }
     };
  
  Thread export = new Thread() {  
     public void run() {
   
     // LONG TASK CALL
                          //  callLongTask();
       
      handler.sendEmptyMessage(0);
        }
     };
  export.start();