Okey dokey. I’ve been through hell and back on this problem. Here’s how to proceed. There are bugs. This posting describes how to analyze bugs in the implementation and work around issues. Just to summarize, here’s how things are supposed to work. Running services will be routinely scavenged and terminated every 30 minutes or so. … Read more
As a security feature of the Android platform, you cannot, under any circumstance, have a foregrounded service without also having a notification. This is because a foregrounded service consumes a heavier amount of resources and is subject to different scheduling constraints (i.e., it doesn’t get killed as quickly) than background services, and the user needs … Read more
When you want to update a Notification set by startForeground(), simply build a new notication and then use NotificationManager to notify it. The key point is to use the same notification id. I didn’t test the scenario of repeatedly calling startForeground() to update the Notification, but I think that using NotificationManager.notify would be better. Updating … Read more
From Google’s docs on Android 8.0 behavior changes: The system allows apps to call Context.startForegroundService() even while the app is in the background. However, the app must call that service’s startForeground() method within five seconds after the service is created. Solution: Call startForeground() in onCreate() for the Service which you use Context.startForegroundService() See also: Background … Read more
2018: Android supports this natively through lifecycle components. March 2018 UPDATE: There is now a better solution. See ProcessLifecycleOwner. You will need to use the new architecture components 1.1.0 (latest at this time) but it’s specifically designed to do this. There’s a simple sample provided in this answer but I wrote a sample app and … Read more