Android Service Stops When App Is Closed

Question

I am starting a service from my main Android activity as follows:

final Context context = base.getApplicationContext();
final Intent intent = new Intent(context, MyService.class);
startService(intent);

When I close the activity page by swiping it out from the recent apps list, the service stops running and restarts after some time. I can't use persistent services with notifications because of my app requirements. How can I make the service NOT restart or shutdown and just keep on running on app exit?

Answer 1

Best solution is to use the sync Adapter in android to start the service. Create a Sync Adapter and call start service their.. inside onPerformSync method. to create sync Account please refer this link https://developer.android.com/training/sync-adapters/index.html

Why SyncAdapter? Ans: Because earlier you used to start the service using your App context. so whenever your app process get killed (When u remove it from task manager or OS kill it because of lack of resources ) at that time your service will also be removed. SyncAdapter will not work in application thread.. so if u call inside it.. service will no longer be removed.. unless u write code to remove it.

Answer 2

<service android:name=".Service2"
            android:process="@string/app_name"
            android:exported="true"
            android:isolatedProcess="true"
            />

Declare this in your manifest. Give a custom name to your process and make that process isolated and exported .

Answer 3

Why not use an IntentService?

IntentService opens a new Thread apart from the main Thread and works there, that way closing the app wont effect it

Be advised that IntentService runs the onHandleIntent() and when its done the service closes, see if it fits your needs. http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/IntentService.html

Answer 4

I'm in the same situation, so far I learned when the app is closed the service get closed also because they are in a one thread, so the service should be on another thread in order fot it not to be closed, look into that and look into keeping the service alive with alarm manager here an example http://www.vogella.com/articles/AndroidServices/article.html this way your service won't be shown in notification.

lastly, after all the research I've done I'm coming to realize that the best choice for a long running service is startForeground(), because it is made for that and the system actually deals with your service well.

Answer 5

Services are quite complicated sometimes.

When you start a service from an activity (or your process), the service is essentially on the same process.

quoting from the developer notes

Most confusion about the Service class actually revolves around what it is not:

A Service is not a separate process. The Service object itself does not imply it is running in its own process; unless otherwise specified, it runs in the same process as the application it is part of.

A Service is not a thread. It is not a means itself to do work off of the main thread (to avoid Application Not Responding errors).

So, what this means is, if the user swipes the app away from the recent tasks it will delete your process(this includes all your activities etc). Now, lets take three scenarios.

First where the service does not have a foreground notification.

In this case your process is killed along with your service.

Second where the service has a foreground notification

In this case the service is not killed and neither is the process

Third scenario If the service does not have a foreground notification, it can still keep running if the app is closed. We can do this by making the service run in a different process. (However, I've heard some people say that it may not work. left to you to try it out yourself)

you can create a service in a separate process by including the below attribute in your manifest.

android:process=":yourService"

or

android:process="yourService" process name must begin with lower case.

quoting from developer notes

If the name assigned to this attribute begins with a colon (':'), a new process, private to the application, is created when it's needed and the service runs in that process. If the process name begins with a lowercase character, the service will run in a global process of that name, provided that it has permission to do so. This allows components in different applications to share a process, reducing resource usage.

this is what I have gathered, if anyone is an expert, please do correct me if I'm wrong :)

Answer 6

Running an intent service will be easier. Service in creating a thread in the application but it's still in the application.