keeping background service alive after user exit app [duplicate]

According to the Android documentation you can achieve this behavior by using the attribute:

 android:isolatedProcess="true"

By the way, I know that it's not answering the question but it might help some people as well - lately, I found out about a great third-party lib that Evernote developers have created. Its name is Android-Job and its aim is to create jobs that run on different processes and can become active again even after a device reboot, it's amazing.

Actually there are different kinds of services you can implement. Use a Service instead of IntentService. There you need to look at START_STICKY , START_NOT_STICKY and START_REDELIVER_INTENT you can keep your service running in background even if your activity dies. Android services also look at AIDL services

For this you can use Handler and Runnable class

   @Override    public void onCreate()    {        Toast.makeText(context, "SMS SERVICE START", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();        handler=new Handler();        runnable=new Runnable() {            @Override            public void run()            {                    TASK();                    handler.postDelayed(runnable,180000);// 3min delay            }        };        handler.postDelayed(runnable,180000);        super.onCreate();    }

This task run continuously 3min

public void TASK(){     //your task }