What happens if a Android Service is started multiple times?

The Service will only run in one instance. However, everytime you start the service, the onStartCommand() method is called.

This is documented here


Absolutely Correct. Only one instance of Service is created for an application process. And when you call StartService(); again, then only onStartCommand() gets called and new Intent is passed to onStartCommand() method.

Note: onCreate() is not called again.

About calling bindService() multiple times:

When you call bindService() multiple times, then again only one instance is used for Service and Android Runtime returns same IBinder object to client.

Means, onBind() is not called multiple times. And just cached IBinder object is returned.

Tags:

Android