xref: /frameworks/base/docs/html/guide/topics/processes/process-lifecycle.jd

page.title=Processes and Application Life Cycle
@jd:body

<p>In most cases, every Android application runs in its own Linux process.
This process is created for the application when some of its code needs to
be run, and will remain running until it is no longer needed <em>and</em>
the system needs to reclaim its memory for use by other applications.</p>

<p>An unusual and fundamental feature of Android is that an application process's
lifetime is <em>not</em> directly controlled by the application itself.
Instead, it is determined by the system through a combination of the parts of the application
that the system knows are running, how important these things are to the user,
and how much overall memory is available in the system.</p>

<p>It is important that
application developers understand how different application components
(in particular {@link android.app.Activity}, {@link android.app.Service},
and {@link android.content.BroadcastReceiver}) impact the lifetime
of the application's process.  <strong>Not using these components correctly can
result in the system killing the application's process while it is doing
important work.</strong></p>

<p>A common example of a process life-cycle bug is a
{@link android.content.BroadcastReceiver} that starts a thread when it
receives an Intent in its {@link android.content.BroadcastReceiver#onReceive
BroadcastReceiver.onReceive()}
method, and then returns from the function.  Once it returns, the system
considers the BroadcastReceiver to be no longer active, and thus, its hosting
process no longer needed (unless other application components are active in
it).  So, the system may kill the process at any time to reclaim memory, and in doing so,
it terminates the spawned thread running in the process.  The solution to this problem
is to start a {@link android.app.Service} from the BroadcastReceiver, so the
system knows that there is still active work being done in the process.</p>

<p>To determine which processes should be killed when low on memory, Android
places each process into an "importance hierarchy" based on the components running in
them and the state of those components. These process types are (in order of importance):</p>

<ol>

<li>A <strong>foreground process</strong> is one that is required for
what the user is currently doing.  Various application components can
cause its containing process to be considered foreground in different
ways.  A process is considered to be in the foreground if any of the
following conditions hold:
 <ul>
  <li> It is running an {@link android.app.Activity}
  at the top of the screen that the user is interacting with (its
  {@link android.app.Activity#onResume} method has been called).</li>
  <li> It has a {@link android.content.BroadcastReceiver} that is currently running
  (its {@link android.content.BroadcastReceiver#onReceive 
  BroadcastReceiver.onReceive()} method is executing).</li>
  <li>It has a {@link android.app.Service} that is currently executing code
  in one of its callbacks ({@link android.app.Service#onCreate Service.onCreate()},
  {@link android.app.Service#onStart Service.onStart()}, or
  {@link android.app.Service#onDestroy Service.onDestroy()}).</li>
 </ul>
</li>
<p>There will only ever be a few such processes in the system, and these will only
be killed as a last resort if memory is so low that not even these processes
can continue to run.  Generally, at this point, the device has
reached a memory paging state, so this action is required in order to keep the user
interface responsive.</p>
</li>

<li>A <strong>visible process</strong> is one holding an {@link android.app.Activity}
that is visible to the user on-screen but not in the foreground (its
{@link android.app.Activity#onPause} method has been called).  This may
occur, for example, if the foreground Activity is displayed as a dialog
that allows the previous Activity to be seen behind it.  Such a
process is considered extremely important and will not be killed unless doing so is
required to keep all foreground processes running.
</li>

<li>A <strong>service process</strong> is one holding a {@link android.app.Service}
that has been started with the
{@link android.content.Context#startService startService()} method.  Though these
processes are not directly visible to the user, they are generally doing things
that the user cares about (such as background mp3 playback or background
network data upload or download), so the system will always keep such processes
running unless there is not enough memory to retain all foreground and visible process.
</li>

<li>A <strong>background process</strong> is one holding an {@link android.app.Activity}
that is not currently visible to the user  (its
{@link android.app.Activity#onStop} method has been called).  These processes
have no direct impact on the user experience.  Provided they implement
their Activity life-cycle correctly
(see {@link android.app.Activity} for more details), the system
can kill such processes at any time to reclaim memory for one of the three
previous processes types.  Usually there are many of these processes running,
so they are kept in an LRU list to ensure the process that was most recently seen
by the user is the last to be killed when running low on memory.
</li>

<li>An <strong>empty process</strong> is one that doesn't hold any active application
components.  The only reason to keep such a process around is as a cache to
improve startup time the next time a component of its application needs to
run.  As such, the system will often kill these processes in order to
balance overall system resources between these empty cached processes and the
underlying kernel caches.
</li>

</ol>

<p>When deciding how to classify a process, the system will base its decision on the most
important level found among all the components currently active in the process.
See the {@link android.app.Activity}, {@link android.app.Service}, and
{@link android.content.BroadcastReceiver} documentation for more detail on how
each of these components contribute to the overall life-cycle of a process.
The documentation for each of these classes describes in more detail how
they impact the overall life-cycle of their application.</p>

<p>A process's priority may also be increased based on other dependencies
a process has to it.  For example, if process A has bound to a
{@link android.app.Service} with
the {@link android.content.Context#BIND_AUTO_CREATE Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE}
flag or is using a
{@link android.content.ContentProvider} in process B, then process B's
classification will always be at least as important as process A's.</p>