How to check if a service is running on Android?

Question

How do I check if a background service is running?

I want an Android activity that toggles the state of the service -- it lets me turn it on if it is off and off if it is on.

Answer 1

I use the following from inside an activity:

private boolean isMyServiceRunning(Class<?> serviceClass) {
    ActivityManager manager = (ActivityManager) getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
    for (RunningServiceInfo service : manager.getRunningServices(Integer.MAX_VALUE)) {
        if (serviceClass.getName().equals(service.service.getClassName())) {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

And I call it using:

isMyServiceRunning(MyService.class)

This works reliably, because it is based on the information about running services provided by the Android operating system through ActivityManager#getRunningServices.

All the approaches using onDestroy or onSometing events or Binders or static variables will not work reliably because as a developer you never know, when Android decides to kill your process or which of the mentioned callbacks are called or not. Please note the "killable" column in the lifecycle events table in the Android documentation.