AsyncTask threads never die
AndroidMultithreadingAndroid AsynctaskAndroid Problem Overview
I'm using AsyncTasks to fetch data in response to the user pressing a button. This works well and keeps the interface responsive while fetching the data, but when I checked out what was going on in the Eclipse debugger, I found out that every time a new AsyncTask was created (which is quite often, because they can only be used once), a new thread was being created but never terminated.
The result is a large number of AsyncTask threads just sitting there. I'm not sure if this is a problem in practice or not, but I'd really like to get rid of those extra threads.
How can I kill these threads?
Android Solutions
Solution 1 - Android
AsyncTask manages a thread pool, created with ThreadPoolExecutor. It will have from 5 to 128 threads. If there are more than 5 threads, those extra threads will stick around for at most 10 seconds before being removed. (note: these figures are for the presently-visible open source code and vary by Android release).
Leave the AsyncTask threads alone, please.
Solution 2 - Android
In addition to CommonsWare's response:
Currently I'm using Android 2.2, and my application uses no more than one AsyncTask at any time, but I'm creating a new one every x minutes. At first new AsyncTask Threads start to appear (a new Thread for a new AsyncTask) but after 5 threads (as mentioned by CommonsWare) they just stay visible in the debug window, and get re-used when new AsyncTask threads are needed. They just stay there until the debugger disconnects.
Solution 3 - Android
Same symptom here. In my case the threads hanged around after I'd killed the Activity, and I was hoping for the App to close completely. Problem partly solved by using a single threaded executor:
myActiveTask.executeOnExecutor(Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor());
This made the thread to vanish after the completing its work.
Solution 4 - Android
Use ThreadPoolExecutor.
BlockingQueue workQueue= new LinkedBlockingQueue<Runnable>(100); // Work pool size
ThreadPoolExecutor executor = new ThreadPoolExecutor(
Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors(), // Initial pool size
Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors(), // Max pool size
1, // KEEP_ALIVE_TIME
TimeUnit.SECONDS, // KEEP_ALIVE_TIME_UNIT
workQueue);
Post your Runnable task by using execute() method.
void execute (Runnable command)
>Executes the given task sometime in the future. The task may execute in a new thread or in an existing pooled thread
Regarding your second query:
>How can I kill these threads?
Once you are done with all your work with ThreadPoolExecutor, shutdown it properly as quoted in below post: