Let me ask - do you *really* understand background processing in Android?

Announcing New Course: Android Background Processing!

You know background processing is important to get great performance out of your app — but it's confusing to know what the best approaches and best practices are in Android.

Master the different background processing options in Android, including Services and WorkManager, in our new Android Background Processing course!

Keep reading to hear more about it from course instructor Filip Babić:

Why should I take your Android Background Processing course?

"Background processing is a core part of modern apps. I can't think of any app that can't benefit from using mechanisms to run code in parallel, whether the app is idle or the user is casually scrolling through the content.

Synchronizing data, uploading files, downloading content, and performing other activities without having to write a lot of code to move those features to the background (or to schedule work at a specific time) can be extremely helpful!

In this course, you'll learn everything you need to run Services or WorkManager workers in the background with various constraints. You'll also learn about legacy background processing concepts, so that you can find your way around older projects as well."

How can this course help with a common pain point in Android development?

"I've used background processing in nearly every project I've worked on, and I've used it in many different ways; such as to schedule notifications at a specific time, or to synchronize the project's database.

Background processing was crucial here, as I could do both of these things, without having to worry about optimizing resources as the system handled most of the work for me.

Background processing can definitely help you when working with constraints; the WorkManager makes it easy to set up background processing with many complex constraints, which lets the Android system deal with all of the hard bits!"

Can you please share a cool background processing tip with us?

"WorkManager is really fun and cool to use, as you can it to build complex workers and add really useful constraints. This prevents your app from using the device when faced with low storage or low battery.

You can implement these constraints very easily:

This is cool: with a simple builder and a few lines of code, you can schedule work to avoid situations where the device shouldn't perform expensive operations. Pretty neat!"

Is there anything else we should know about your Android Background Processing course?

"There are many background processing mechanisms in Android, so be sure to choose the one that fits your use case. WorkManager is useful when you need something to produce a result no matter what, or if you need to add constraints to the workers.

Services are useful for long running operations, and when you need to run operations in the foreground, even if your app is not active or not being used. So be sure to pick the option that works for you, and your project!"

Filip's Android Background Processing course is available for subscribers now!

— Ray