[android-developers] Re: Swipe app out of recent tasks permanently kills app (like force-stop) even though it's running background services!

Thanks but I'm fully aware of this and as the title suggest I'm referring to swiping an app from the recent task list. Not sure how this has anything to do with this.

On Android 4.4, the recent task list is now acting like a force-stop and that's a definitive and obvious bug. And this behavior is anything but what end-users do expect when removing apps from recent list. I've already received a dozen reports from end-users who think my app stops functioning unexpectedly, while they only swiped it away from the recent list, they expect its services to continue running!

How nice this is when an app actually has widgets on the launcher? Those simply stop refreshing forever! If that's not a bug, I guess Android OS and my app both have 0 bug. I'll make sure to refer my users to your posts so they understand there's no bug!

Have a read at these: 

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Service.html#onTaskRemoved(android.content.Intent)

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/pm/ServiceInfo.html#FLAG_STOP_WITH_TASK

On Friday, December 13, 2013 4:25:42 AM UTC+1, RichardC wrote:

Have a read of:

Launch controls on stopped applications in

http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-3.1.html

Note that it says:

"Applications are in a stopped state when they are first installed but are not yet launched and when they are manually stopped by the user (in Manage Applications)."

This was introduced in 3.1 before we had swiping away.

On Friday, December 13, 2013 1:22:27 AM UTC, 3c wrote:

I cannot agree with this as the recent task list in no way suggest killing the apps. Actually every users seems to see it differently. Some take that recent task list as the name suggest, recent tasks and activities, others see it as you suggest an app killing, but most users don't know what's actually happening when removing a task from that list. 

Furthermore that list doesn't actually reflect apps still running, but the recent tasks or apps used by end-user. On boot I may have a dozen apps running, but no way to kill them (except going into settings, force-stop) if I haven't started them once, making this task killer the worse I've ever seen: it requires end-user to open the app before being able to kill it permanently! And it's not because I remove a task from that very list that I don't want its services to continue running.

Looking at documentation for the Service class and the related manifest attributes definitely confirm the behavior of Android 4.0 to 4.3:

With Android 4.4, the below flag is now ineffective, which falls into the bug category, not the other way around as you suggest. 

public static final int stopWithTask

Added in API level 14

If set to true, this service with be automatically stopped when the user remove a task rooted in an activity owned by the application. The default is false.

Must be a boolean value, either "true" or "false".

public void onTaskRemoved (Intent rootIntent)

Added in API level 14

This is called if the service is currently running and the user has removed a task that comes from the service's application. If you have set ServiceInfo.FLAG_STOP_WITH_TASK then you will not receive this callback; instead, the service will simply be stopped.

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