Android前台服务优先级高难被杀死，返回START_STICKY是否有意义？

Great question—let’s cut through the assumptions here. While foreground services do have extremely high priority and rarely get killed by the system, they aren’t completely invincible. Returning START_STICKY still serves practical purposes in specific scenarios:

• Foreground services can still be killed in extreme low-memory situations
  Even with foreground priority, if the system is under crippling memory pressure (think multiple active foreground apps + critical system processes), it may terminate your service. In this case, START_STICKY tells the system to attempt restarting your service once memory becomes available. Without this return value, the service would stay dead unless your app explicitly restarts it.

• Restarted services need to re-establish foreground status
  When the system restarts your service via START_STICKY, it starts in a background state by default. Your onStartCommand implementation can check this, re-call startForeground() with your persistent notification, and restore the service’s high-priority status. This lets you seamlessly resume critical functionality (like music playback, location tracking) without user intervention.

• Preserves basic restart behavior for non-user-initiated kills
  If your service is terminated by system updates, crash recovery, or other non-user actions, START_STICKY ensures the system tries to bring it back up. This is crucial for services that need to run continuously (e.g., a fitness tracker logging activity) even after unexpected system-level interruptions.

Important caveat: START_STICKY won’t help if the user manually kills your service (via Settings > Apps > Force Stop, or recent apps swipes on some devices). In those cases, the system respects the user’s choice and won’t restart the service automatically.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Florian Walther