Keep Alive

A simple app to keep specific apps alive by checking if they are running. If not, they will be attempted (*) to start for you.

⛔ STOP - Know before you use

This app is designed with a very specific use case in mind. It is important to understand what this app does and how.

- App is designed to be always running in the foreground to watch and restart other applications. - App is NOT optimized for battery and will cause high battery drain. Ideally, this should not be used on your primary phone that you use daily. - I use this on a secondary phone plugged into a power cable 24/7. - App contains some additional features like Remote Logging and Heartbeat due to my personal needs. However, the app can be used without enabling those features. - See the permission section below to better understand the app.

Limitations

Despite having many needed permissions, this app may still not work due to the strict security of Android.

- Android 16 (API 36) and newer releases are not supported because their expanded background-start and overlay restrictions prevent the watchdog foreground service from reliably launching other apps; testing shows the core use case fails. - One known issue is related to receiving RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED event that is needed to start the watchdog service of this app. However, the RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED event is not delivered until user unlocks the device after phone is restarted or incase phone got soft-started because of very low memory pressure. - In that case, this "Keep Alive" app will fail to start configured apps until the device is unlocked manually. See #70 for technical details: https://github.com/hossain-khan/android-keep-alive/issues/70 - Another known issue is, even though foreground service is running, it does not trigger the periodic checks based on your configured interval. I have noticed this happen in Samsung Galaxy S23, on other phone it works. So, there might be some bug or manufacturer or device specific issue. Take a look into "Monitor Activity" to see how checks are doing.

(*) The app uses Android’s standard explicit intent to start an app by its package ID. The intent is sent to the Android OS to request the app to run, but it is ultimately up to the OS whether the app will actually be started.