How To Close All Running Apps Android

4 Answers 4

You can use Process.killProcess(int pid) to kill processes that have the same UID with your App.
You can use ActivityManager.killBackgroundProcesses(String packageName),with KILL_BACKGROUND_PROCESSES permission in your manifest(for API >= 8) or ActivityManager.restartPackage (String packageName)(for API < 8) to kill specified process,except of forground process.

So if you would to kill all other processes when your program is foreground process,you would to use ActivityManager.killBackgroundProcesses or ActivityManager.restartPackage:

                List<ApplicationInfo> packages;     PackageManager pm;     pm = getPackageManager();     //get a list of installed apps.     packages = pm.getInstalledApplications(0);     ActivityManager mActivityManager = (ActivityManager)context.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);    String myPackage = getApplicationContext().getPackageName();    for (ApplicationInfo packageInfo : packages) {         if((packageInfo.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM)==1)continue;         if(packageInfo.packageName.equals(myPackage)) continue;         mActivityManager.killBackgroundProcesses(packageInfo.packageName);    }

In above snippet code,each process will be killed unless it be process of your App or system process.
References:
How to close all active applications from my Android app?
How do task killers work?

answered Jul 26 '12 at 10:09

hasanghaforianhasanghaforian

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I dont understand what the line -------- if((packageInfo.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM)==1)continue; does..!! could you please explain

Nov 29 '12 at 12:23
@lalith If ((packageInfo.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM)==1) be true,it means that this App is a system App (and we have not stop a system App),so we continue.

Nov 29 '12 at 12:40
will it remove apps from recent apps list (displayed by long pressing the home button)?

Jan 26 '14 at 18:37
@UmerFarooq I mentioned it before in the answer: In above snippet code,each process will be killed unless it be process of your App or system process.

Jan 27 '14 at 2:32
recent apps are not being removed

Nov 21 '17 at 17:33

You have another possibility if the device is rooted (has superuser rights).

You can invoke an external process that would use the su rights. But note that it's probably a bad design as Android OS should be the only one to kill processes.

                try {    Process rootProcess = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[] { "su" });     String command = "kill - 9 <pid>";     BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(rootProcess.getOutputStream()), 2048);    try {       bw.write(command);       bw.newLine();       bw.flush();    } catch (IOException e) {     // Handle error    } } catch (Exception e) {    e.printStackTrace();    // Device not rooted!             }

answered Sep 13 '11 at 7:47

aymericaymeric

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I tested it and still app running but killed

Sep 13 '11 at 9:05
Your phone has to be rooted

Dec 9 '16 at 16:22

According to doc enter link description here

Note that, though this API allows us to request to kill any process based on its PID, the kernel will still impose standard restrictions on which PIDs you are actually able to kill. Typically this means only the process running the caller's packages/application and any additional processes created by that app

I test it, and it only kill process hosted my App.

answered Sep 13 '11 at 7:08

BandzioBandzio

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Then is it impossible to kill others running applications ?

Sep 13 '11 at 7:17
I do little search about killing external app. But, nothing usefull find. In the other hand, we have many Task Managers app who can kill any external process. So, this is possible - but unfortunatelly i don't know how yet.

Sep 13 '11 at 8:01

Reflect to force stop

ActivityManager am = (ActivityManager) getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE); Method method = Class.forName("android.app.ActivityManager").getMethod("forceStopPackage", String.class); method.invoke(am, pkgName);

You should add this system permission: