Alarm Manager or Work Manager for Recurring Background Work

Question

I'm having trouble deciding whether to run some recurring background work with Alarm Manager or Work Manager:

• The work is going to consist of Room Database operations so I'll need access to Dao to complete my work.
• It is going to be recurring at fixed intervals (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)
• I need to set a start date and time for the recurrence intervals.
• the work will recur until canceled by the user
• If the user is using the app when the work is supposed to be scheduled, I want the work to be done immediately. If the user is not on the app (app is in the background or device is turned off), I don't care if the work is done after the scheduled time as long as it is at least started by the next time the user opens the app.
• the work needs to continue as scheduled after device reboots and app restarts.

Answer 1

For recurring background work, AlarmManger isn't suitable. As the name implies, it's intended to notify the system of an event at a precise time. Just like a physical alarm that wakes a person up even if the person sleeps, AlarmManager will wake up the device from doze mode which will result in more power usage. it is suitable for suitations like setting remainders such as for calender events which the users probably set by themselves.

On the other hand, WorkManager is intended to carry out background processing or work that would persist. Workmanager is much more efficient for recurring task especially as it allows you set constraints to determine when it should start or stop the background work.

check the link form the offical documentation on WorkManger: workmanager architecture tabular comparison between the two