How can I programmatically force stop an Android app with Java?

Question

How can I force stop an app with Java? I'm trying to build a memory cleaner that can help clean out background processes.

I know there is a way to kill the process of an app, but when you go to the running list, the app is still there even after you have killed it. And I have tried a lot of similar memory cleaning apps, only one of them can totally force stop apps but it has so many useless notifications - very annoying.

P.S.: When you go to Settings -> Apps, you will see a list of apps. Click on one of these apps and you end up on the app's info. There is a button named "force stop". By clicking on it, the app is killed. I want to perform that kind of action in my app. How can this be done?

Solution 1

get the process ID of your application, and kill that process onDestroy() method

@Override
public void onDestroy()
 {
    super.onDestroy();

    int id= android.os.Process.myPid();
    android.os.Process.killProcess(id);
 }

or

getActivity().finish();
System.exit(0);

and if you want to kill other apps from your activity, then this should work

You can send the signal using:

Process.sendSignal(pid, Process.SIGNAL_KILL);

To completely kill the process, it's recommended to call:

ActivityManager.killBackgroundProcesses(packageNameToKill)

before sending the signal.

Please, note that your app needs to own the KILL_BACKGROUND_PROCESSES permission. Thus, in the AndroidManifest.xml, you need to include:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.KILL_BACKGROUND_PROCESSES" />

Solution 2

Try to use following code

    finish(); // for stopping Current Activity

    // add this line for Removing Force Close

    @Override
        protected void onDestroy() {
    // closing Entire Application
            android.os.Process.killProcess(android.os.Process.myPid());
            super.onDestroy();
        }
    }

May be this solution will help you Force Close an app programmatically

Comments

[Hawk]

Your question is lacking enough details.

[Mitte]

Can I kill other apps in this way? Can you show more snippets? Thanks!

[Mehrdad1373]

from Android M , you cannot stop other app processes .it is completely up to Android os(unless you have root access).

[milosmns]

Note that calling #finish() will have almost no effect if you call System.exit(0) one line after that call. So if you really want to force-exit, wait somewhere else for the onDestroy() callback (like.. listen for lifecycle events in the application class). But also note that all of these kill methods are very aggressive and the Process calls will both restart the service if you marked it as STICKY at service creation.