Terminating a third-party application like the button "App Info -> Force stop" does

Question

I can terminate my application like this:

android.os.Process.killProcess(android.os.Process.myPid());

How can I terminate any application (or only the ones which allow to do that) much like the button App Info -> Force stop does?

Do you want to terminate other apps or just put those apps to background? — Phuc Tran, Apr 10 '15 at 05:06
@phuc_tran what do you think based on what I've written in my question? — Incerteza, Apr 10 '15 at 05:08
I just want to know the context where you want to do that. In some cases, terminating is not only solution :) — Phuc Tran, Apr 10 '15 at 05:09
handle the lifecycle of the activities terminating an application is not a good idea. Check this might help http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2033914/quitting-an-application-is-that-frowned-upon/2034238#2034238 — Raghunandan, Apr 10 '15 at 05:12
@Raghunandan, the questions is not whether or not it's a good idea. — Incerteza, Apr 10 '15 at 05:13
@AlexanderSupertramp i am not sure why you require this. I have not come across such a situation. So in what situation you want to do this? — Raghunandan, Apr 10 '15 at 05:15

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 10 '15 at 05:22

1

Firstly you cannot kill the processes your application has not created. For processes started by your application you can kill them by using

public static final void killProcess (int pid)

Docs

If you want to kill background processes you can do

public void killBackgroundProcesses (String packageName)

Docs

But you will need KILL_BACKGROUND_PROCESSES permission for that.

AFAIK this will just kill the process, but it won't kill the task in memory. So when the app is restarted, the activity stack/task will get re created from last time unless ofcourse the system itself kills it for freeing up the resources.

So AFAIK you can never achieve the same effect as App Info -> Force stop programmatically because there is no way to clear tasks in the memory and only system can do that.

answered Apr 10 '15 at 05:22

Aniket Thakur

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And if I grant my application the permission "Device administrator"? – Incerteza Apr 10 '15 at 05:23
If your app is a system app or have those permissions then yes you might be able to do that. – Aniket Thakur Apr 10 '15 at 05:25
More specifically you will need `android.permission.FORCE_STOP_PACKAGES` permission and your app should be signed by system key. – Aniket Thakur Apr 10 '15 at 05:27
So which one do I have to call regardless whether the process in background or not to kill it for sure given I have enough permissions: killProcess or killBackgroundProcesses? – Incerteza Apr 10 '15 at 05:37
You will have to use `ActivityManager.forceStopPackage()` – Aniket Thakur Apr 10 '15 at 05:43

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 10 '15 at 05:27

You can use that code to get Aplicattion PID.

 /**
 * Gets the process pid.
 *
 * @param processName the process name
 * @return the process pid
 */
public static int getProcessPid(String processName, Context context) {
    ActivityManager activityManager = (ActivityManager) context.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
    List<RunningAppProcessInfo> procList = null;
    int result = -1;

    procList = activityManager.getRunningAppProcesses();
    for (Iterator<RunningAppProcessInfo> iterator = procList.iterator(); iterator
            .hasNext();) {
        RunningAppProcessInfo procInfo = iterator.next();
        if (procInfo.processName.equals(processName)) {
            result = procInfo.pid;
            break;
        }
    }
    return result;
}

Terminating a third-party application like the button "App Info -> Force stop" does

2 Answers2