Service restarted on Application Close - START_STICKY

Question

I have an app that runs as a web server. The app has a service that is START_STICKY I want this service to run the web server all the time (option is given to user in a notification to stop it).

Problem is that the server is restarted (loosing settings etc) when i swipe my app closed. It stays there fine but logcat shows that it is restarting.

I can re- open my app and bind to the new service, this works fine. Although swipe closing again has the same effect.

I need this to NOT restart.

Standard service code

private WebServerService mService;
private ServiceConnection mConnection = new ServiceConnection() {

    @Override
    public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName className,
                                   IBinder binder) {
        WebServerService.MyBinder b = (WebServerService.MyBinder) binder;
        mService = b.getService();
    }

    public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName className) {
        mService = null;
    }
};

public serviceStart() {
    mIntent = new Intent(mContext.getApplicationContext(), WebServerService.class);
    mContext.startService(mIntent);
    mContext.bindService(mIntent, mConnection, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE);
}

Service on start

 @Override
public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
    super.onStartCommand(intent, START_STICKY, startId);
    Log.d("SERVICE","Started");
    return START_STICKY;
}

Answer 1

Short answer: you can't. Every Android app can be killed by the system or by the user when the system claims memory or the user swipes out the app from the recent apps list. This is an Android design and all apps must adhere to it. The only (small) improvement you can have is setting the service as a Foreground service:

where the system considers it to be something the user is actively aware of and thus not a candidate for killing when low on memory. (It is still theoretically possible for the service to be killed under extreme memory pressure from the current foreground application, but in practice this should not be a concern.)