This is a similar question to How to check if a service is running on Android? but since the question is old and the answers provided there are deprecated or not working properly. Thus the separate question.

I have an implementation, that fires a Service on Boot Complete, but I also want to start the service in onCreate of MainActivity, in case the service was not started before.

here are what I have tried:

1. Fetch Static Boolean to get the state of the Service as demonstrated below.

MyService.kt

class MyService : Service() {
    override fun onCreate() {
        super.onCreate()
        isServiceStarted = true
    }
    override fun onDestroy() {
        super.onDestroy()
        isServiceStarted = false
    }
    companion object {
        var isServiceStarted = false
    }
}

MainActivity.kt

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity(){
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)

        val serviceStarted = MyService.isServiceStarted
        if (!serviceStarted) {
            val startMyService = Intent(this, MyService::class.java)
            ContextCompat.startForegroundService(this, startMyService)
        }
    }
}

but I soon discovered that onDestroy is not always called when a Service is destroyed, thereby leaving my static boolean variable (isServiceStarted) to be true, when in reality it has been destroyed.

2.A function to check

fun isMyServiceRunning(serviceClass : Class<*> ) : Boolean{
    var manager = getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE) as ActivityManager
    for (service in manager.getRunningServices(Integer.MAX_VALUE)) {
        if (serviceClass.name.equals(service.service.className)) {
            return true
        }
    }
    return false
}

The Call

isMyServiceRunning(MyService::class.java)

Problems with this approach include: - getRunningServices is deprecated since Android O (API 27), - It is resource consuming and inefficient to loop through running services like that and because the docs say:

Note: this method is only intended for debugging or implementing service management type user interfaces.

It's not meant for control flow!

What is an Elegant/Efficient way to check if a Service is already running?