Qt 5.13 | Android Services

Qt 5.13.2 Reference Documentation

# Android Services

Starting with Qt 5.7, you can create Android services using Qt. A service is a component that runs in background, so, it has no user interface. It is useful to perform long-term operations such as logging GPS, waiting for social media notifications, and so on. A service will continue to run even if the application that started it exits.

To create a service, do the following steps:

1. Uncomment the service part of your `AndroidManifest.xml`.
2. Make sure the `service` tag contains an `android:process=":some_name"` attribute. It is needed to force the `service` to run in a separate process than the `activity`.
3. If you're using the same application (.so file) for activity and also for service, you need to use `android.app.arguments` `meta-data` to pass some arguments to your `main` function in order to know which one is which.
4. To enable background running, uncomment `android.app.background_running` `meta-data` and set it to true (`android:value="true"` ).

Qt loads the `.so` file defined in `android.app.lib_name` `meta-data`, and calls the `main` function with all the arguments set in `android.app.arguments` `meta-data`.

See Android Services documentation for more information.