Keeping an Android app running in the background, preventing it from stopping/dying

Question

I've created an App that should keep working while in the background. This seems to work fine for a time, but if I don't use my phone for an extended period I find that it has stopped working, and upon opening it then starts up again.

All my searching leads me to posts on how to make my app run in the background, which it does fine (I basically just pulled that whole part from the Xamarin tutorial), but for some reason it just decided to stop after a time.

Is there any way to force/ensure that an app will continue running in the background?

Answer 1

User Service and perform the tasks you want in that, services run in the background even if app is closed from background.

Answer 2

Please see the following for reference:

http://developer.android.com/guide/components/services.html

https://developer.android.com/training/run-background-service/create-service.html

But for startup you can just follow the sample : http://www.tutorialspoint.com/android/android_services.htm

Answer 3

If you want your app to keep performing calculations in the background, you should opt for a Service ( documentation ). You can choose to build a service that will still be running in the background, despite the application being closed.

[Service]
public class DemoService : Service
{
      public override StartCommandResult OnStartCommand (Android.Content.Intent intent, StartCommandFlags flags, int startId)
{
        var t = new Thread (() => {
                Log.Debug ("DemoService", "Doing work");
                Thread.Sleep (5000);
                Log.Debug ("DemoService", "Work complete");
                StopSelf ();
        }
        );
        t.Start ();
        return StartCommandResult.Sticky;
}
}

If you mean by "keep working in the background", that your app should restart from the correct fragment/activity you should check how to save your state. ( documentation )