How to detect if changes were made in the preferences?

Do

SharedPreferences.OnSharedPreferenceChangeListener spChanged = new
                           SharedPreferences.OnSharedPreferenceChangeListener() {
            @Override
    public void onSharedPreferenceChanged(SharedPreferences sharedPreferences,
            String key) {
        // your stuff here
    }
};

In your PreferenceActivity, ie make it a member of your PreferenceActivity class and then do registerOnSharedPreferenceChangeListener(spChanged) in the PreferenceActivity.onCreate() method.

That’s what I do and I never have a problem.

Else it’s your conditional checking in the listener that is at fault. Post the code.

EDIT:

From the code you posted, you should make prefs a class member variable so it has a global scope.

And do prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(getApplicationContext()); instead of getSharedPreferences because you haven’t created that file.

To create a file you need to use PreferenceManager. To get a PreferenceManager, use Activity.getPreferenceManager().