Android Background Service is restarting when application is killed

Android Background Service is restarting when application is killed

I am developing an application in which a background service is created to collect sensor data. I am starting the service from my activity:

startService(new Intent(this, MyService.class));  

I created the service so if the application is destroyed, the background service still continues to collect data. I tried this, and it worked to a certain extent. My problem is that when I kill the application, the service seems to restart because the onCreate() service and the onStart() methods are invoked. Is there any way with which the service isn't restarted please?

UPDATE:

As suggested in an answer below, I added the following method in the service but no luck.

@Override  public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {      return START_NOT_STICKY;  }  

Answer by Marcin S. for Android Background Service is restarting when application is killed

If you are using an IntentService, it has an

onHandleIntent()   

method where you should place the code that needs to be executed. It is executed in a separate thread (not a UI thread where your application runs) therefore your app shouldn't affect it. When the code has finished executing, the thread is terminated and the service is stopped automatically.

Answer by fedepaol for Android Background Service is restarting when application is killed

It depends on the value returned in onStartCommand.

You must return START_NOT_STICKY

According to the doc:

For started services, there are two additional major modes of operation they can decide to run in, depending on the value they return from onStartCommand(): START_STICKY is used for services that are explicitly started and stopped as needed, while START_NOT_STICKY or START_REDELIVER_INTENT are used for services that should only remain running while processing any commands sent to them

In short: If you return START_STICKY the service gets recreated whenever the resources are available. If you return START_NOT_STICKY you have to re-activate the service sending a new intent.

Since all of this triggered my curiosity, I made a sample app to test this. You can find the zip with all the sources here There are a startService button and a stopService button that do what you would expect from them. The service returns START_NOT_STICKY in onStartCommand. I placed toasts in onCreate, onStartCommand and onDestroy.

Here what happens:

• If I press start, onCreate and onStart are called
• If I press stop, onDestroy is triggered
• If I press start twice, onCreate is called once and onStartCommand twice

So it behaves as one would expect.

If I start the service and kill the app as you described, onDestroy does not get called but neither onCreate or onStart.

If I get back to the app and I press start again, onCreate gets called which means that, as I wrote before, START_NOT_STICKY prevents the service to getting restarted automatically.

I guess you have something else in your app that starts the service again (maybe a pending intent).

Answer by Ankush Wadhwa for Android Background Service is restarting when application is killed

When the memory is low, a service running in background automatically gets killed. Instead of using startService() to start a service, try using StartForeground() instead. The service runs in the foreground and will never be killed even if memory is low.

Answer by sam for Android Background Service is restarting when application is killed

I ran into the same problem and was able to resolve it by making the service run in a global process. You do this by adding the following to the manifest tag:

process="com.myapp.ProcessName"

(Make up whatever name.)

When I did this I found that my service wasn't killed (and restarted) when the app is swiped off the list. Presumably this is because the app process is killed when you swipe it off, but global service processes are not.

The disadvantage of this is that communication between your app and service now has to be via the IBinder interface; you can't directly call functions in the application or service from the other one, because they're running in different processes.

Answer by Plumbus for Android Background Service is restarting when application is killed

The app and the service live on the same process, which means when the app is killed so is your service. Changing the return value of onStartCommand doesn't affect this process. It simply tells the Service to either start/stop when you tell it or when it's finished doing what it needs to. As mentioned in your comment to your original post, setting it as a foreground process worked, but that's really just forcing the service to have a high priority, not solving the problem.

To change the Service so that it's killed separately and assuming it's a started service rather than a bound service due to the use of onStartCommand, specify a process name in the manifest for that Service.

From the Process and Threads Developer Guide:

The manifest entry for each type of component element? , , , and ? supports an android:process attribute that can specify a process in which that component should run. You can set this attribute so that each component runs in its own process or so that some components share a process while others do not. You can also set android:process so that components of different applications run in the same process?provided that the applications share the same Linux user ID and are signed with the same certificates.

Android might decide to shut down a process at some point, when memory is low and required by other processes that are more immediately serving the user. Application components running in the process that's killed are consequently destroyed. A process is started again for those components when there's again work for them to do.

From in Manifest File:

android:process

The name of the process where the service is to run. Normally, all components of an application run in the default process created for the application. It has the same name as the application package. The element's process attribute can set a different default for all components. But component can override the default with its own process attribute, allowing you to spread your application across multiple processes.

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.

Not sure why the other answer that mentioned this was down voted. I've used this method in the past and, today, created a simple one Activity app with a Service on a different process just to make sure I wasn't crazy. I used Android Device Monitor to kill the app's process. You can see both, separate processes in ADM and can see that when the app's process is killed, the Service's is not.

Answer by abissa for Android Background Service is restarting when application is killed

I know its much late to answer this question, but may be it can be helpful to others. This really helped me for my Music Player App.

If there are services which can be disruptive or can affect the user experience like music etc , then in that case you have to use Notification and when service is started successfully, then create the Notification and use the function

startForeground(int Notification_id,Notification);  

This will run your service in background without restarting and reinvoking its methods

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Service.html

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