How do Task Managers kill apps?

Question

First of all I know it's bad to use a task manager/killer in Android and all that, but what I was wondering is how do task managers like Advanced Task Killer kill other applications?
I wanted to develop a simple application that would do this, just for the learning experience.
I tried executing the Linux command kill pid from my application but it didn't work, maybe it requires root?

So, how do I accomplish this from my application? I have a simple ListActivity that shows the currently running tasks and when a user long-presses an item I want to kill that task.

have a look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4921244/android-task-kill, which covers this. — Mark Allison, Jun 10 '11 at 08:11
Thanks, but I've already read that post :) It doesn't answer my question though, the Process.killProcess function only allows one to kill my own process and not others, if I'm not wrong. I also tried it on my application but it didn't work :/ — Bhaskar Kandiyal, Jun 10 '11 at 08:40

score 12 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 13 '12 at 16:03

12

You can send the signal using:

Process.sendSignal(pid, Process.SIGNAL_KILL);

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

ActivityManager.killBackgroundProcesses(PackageName)

before sending the signal.

edited Jan 13 '12 at 16:03

answered Jun 12 '11 at 19:23

Bhaskar Kandiyal

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where is ActivityManager.killBackgroundProcesses... it says that the method is undefined... – Taranasus Sep 12 '11 at 14:27
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so does this really kill external applications? I'm not quit sure how to check this. ActivityManager.killBackgroundProcesses(PackageName); Process.sendSignal(pid, Process.SIGNAL_KILL); – Nov 10 '11 at 09:58
does it? I have the same problem – Rohit Tigga Aug 21 '14 at 22:21

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

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slayton has good answer in this question.I add this detail to his answer:
- when you use ActivityManager.killBackgroundProcesses(PackageName) , you can not kill foreground process.

I saw these open sources project link in K_Anas'answer to this question:
- github repository
- code.google

edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

Community

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answered Jul 25 '12 at 12:15

hasanghaforian

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 25 '12 at 09:32

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try this,

android.os.Process.killProcess(pid)

that will work...

answered Jul 25 '12 at 09:32

Amit

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bastami82 · Answer 4 · 2017-06-23T06:38:15.043

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1- Add to manifest

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

2 - In your code

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("adb shell killall com.example.app");

Note : Your app needs to have access to adb shell system/app (root permission)

edited Jun 23 '17 at 06:38

answered Oct 26 '16 at 15:29

bastami82

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You need to have root permission for this – Yehonatan Feb 01 '17 at 13:10

How do Task Managers kill apps?

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