Develop Reference

As a system app, kill another process, by package name

I'm developing a watchdog system service on android.
In case I detect that some foreground app is blocked/halted I want to force restart of the app.
I've already tried kill background app, with no success (as i'm trying to kill a foreground app).
also, via exec(adb shell su killall com.package.name) crashes with no permission, as i'm "just" system, not rooted device.

Finally got a way.
You can get the pid name by
private int getAppUid(String packageName){
ActivityManager mActivityManager = (ActivityManager) ctx.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
List<ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo> pidsTask = mActivityManager.getRunningAppProcesses();
for(int i = 0; i < pidsTask.size(); i++) {
if (pidsTask.get(i).processName.equals(packageName)){
return pidsTask.get(i).uid;
}
}
return -1;
}
after that, you can just kill it with
android.os.Process.killProcess(pUID);
works for my android 7 device.

How to check if my app is still running in an Android service?

I'm starting to develop an Android sticky service for my app with Delphi 10.1 Berlin, but I haven't found any tutorial or book that get into it, so I'm asking:
Which is the simplest way to detect if my app is still running or has been killed by the OS/user?

You can look for the process id by package name and see if it is still active.
ActivityManager am = (ActivityManager) context.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
List<ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo> pids = am.getRunningAppProcesses();
int processid = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < pids.size(); i++) {
ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo info = pids.get(i);
if (info.processName.equalsIgnoreCase("packageNameSearchingFor")) {
processid = info.pid; //found it, we are running
}
}
Or you can simply store a shared value in public shared pref or database accessible through ContentProvider that is updated when in foreground or background to check. Either way is fine.

How some apps still can get current apps processes and kill them?

Background
In the past, I've found the next method of killing an app's background processes, given its package name:
public static boolean killApp(final Context context, final String packageName) {
final ActivityManager am = (ActivityManager) context.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
final List<ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo> pids = am.getRunningAppProcesses();
for (int i = 0; i < pids.size(); i++) {
final ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo info = pids.get(i);
if (info.processName.equals(packageName)) {
android.os.Process.killProcess(info.pid);
if (new File("/system/bin/kill").exists()) {
InputStream inputStream = null;
try {
inputStream = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("kill -9 " + info.pid).getInputStream();
final byte[] buffer = new byte[100];
inputStream.read(buffer);
} catch (final IOException e) {
}
StreamsUtil.closeStream(inputStream);
}
am.killBackgroundProcesses(packageName);
return true;
}
}
am.killBackgroundProcesses(packageName);
return false;
}
The problem
Ever since a specific Android version (5.1), the function to get the list of running processes only returns the current app's processes, so it's quite useless to use it.
What I've found
Most apps on the Play Store indeed fail to show a list of processes, and instead, show just the current app's process or a list of services at most.
It seems that some apps still manage to show background apps processes and even be able to kill them. As an example, I've found AVG's app that's capable of doing so, here .
Before they can do it, they tell the user to enable the usage stats settings for the app, which I remember of using for checking general information of apps launch time.
Another app that succeeded killing background processes, yet without any user confirmation , is "fast task killer". It also shows a toast of all processes being killed. I could be wrong, but it seems that it's always the same number of tasks.
I also think there is a relatively easy way to get the list of processes using the "ps" function, but only if the device is rooted (otherwise it will return just the current app's processes).
There was a temporary solution with a library, found here (published here), but this doesn't seem to work on Android 7.1.2 , and most probably on previous versions.
The question
How do apps get the list of apps that have background processes, and how do they kill them?
Is it possible to do so without using the UsageStatsManager class ?

How to kill tasks in android?

I use the following snippet to kill tasks , it works perfectly fine but it doesn't kill my own app. How do i make it kill my app as well?
// kill tasks
List<String> reservedPackages = new ArrayList<String>();
reservedPackages.add("system");
reservedPackages.add("com.android.launcher2");
reservedPackages.add("com.android.inputmethod.latin");
reservedPackages.add("com.android.phone");
reservedPackages.add("com.android.wallpaper");
reservedPackages.add("com.google.process.gapps");
reservedPackages.add("android.process.acore");
reservedPackages.add("android.process.media");
ActivityManager am = (ActivityManager) context
.getSystemService(Activity.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
List<RunningAppProcessInfo> listeProcessus = am
.getRunningAppProcesses();
for (RunningAppProcessInfo processus : listeProcessus) {
String packageName = processus.processName.split(":")[0];
if (!context.getPackageName().equals(packageName)
&& !reservedPackages.contains(packageName)) {
am.restartPackage(packageName);
}
}

Google has recently removed the GET_TASKS permission and developers can't make changes to running tasks . The only remained way is to have a root access and close the running tasks that is not possible for All Android Users

As of api 21 (android lolipop) it has been removed by Google

Is there a way to get Process Ids of other 3rd party applications in Android...?

I have a requirement in my project where in i have to kill process of 3rd party application.
As i know Android can have multiple application running at a time, so can i get all those Process
Ids some how...

This class will help you to kill processes:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Process.html
This gives you a list of currently running processes:
ActivityManager.getRunningAppProcesses();
The list contains ActivityManager.RunningAppProcessInfo objects which store the pid. You can then kill the processes via
Process.killProcess(pid);
You need the proper permissions to do that. Android should throw an exception if you try to kill a process without the proper permissions and tell you what permission you need.

check this way if it solves your purpose:
ArrayList<PackageInfo> res = new ArrayList<PackageInfo>();
PackageManager pm = context.getApplicationContext().getPackageManager();
List<PackageInfo> packs = pm.getInstalledPackages(0);
packs.get(pos).gids;
packs.get(pos).sharedUserId;

You can get information about all running processes using ActivityManager. Refer following code:
ActivityManager am = (ActivityManager) getSystemService(ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
List<RunningAppProcessInfo> list = am.getRunningAppProcesses();
for (RunningAppProcessInfo proc : list) {
Log.v("Proccess", proc.processName + " : " + proc.pid);
}
Multiple applications can be running in the same process, so it would be better to use RunninAppProcessInfo.pkgList over RunninAppProcessInfo.processName.