Android APIs
public final class

StrictMode

extends Object
java.lang.Object
   ↳ android.os.StrictMode

Class Overview

StrictMode is a developer tool which detects things you might be doing by accident and brings them to your attention so you can fix them.

StrictMode is most commonly used to catch accidental disk or network access on the application's main thread, where UI operations are received and animations take place. Keeping disk and network operations off the main thread makes for much smoother, more responsive applications. By keeping your application's main thread responsive, you also prevent ANR dialogs from being shown to users.

Note that even though an Android device's disk is often on flash memory, many devices run a filesystem on top of that memory with very limited concurrency. It's often the case that almost all disk accesses are fast, but may in individual cases be dramatically slower when certain I/O is happening in the background from other processes. If possible, it's best to assume that such things are not fast.

Example code to enable from early in your Application, Activity, or other application component's onCreate() method:

 public void onCreate() {
     if (DEVELOPER_MODE) {
         StrictMode.setThreadPolicy(new StrictMode.ThreadPolicy.Builder()
                 .detectDiskReads()
                 .detectDiskWrites()
                 .detectNetwork()   // or .detectAll() for all detectable problems
                 .penaltyLog()
                 .build());
         StrictMode.setVmPolicy(new StrictMode.VmPolicy.Builder()
                 .detectLeakedSqlLiteObjects()
                 .detectLeakedClosableObjects()
                 .penaltyLog()
                 .penaltyDeath()
                 .build());
     }
     super.onCreate();
 }
 

You can decide what should happen when a violation is detected. For example, using penaltyLog() you can watch the output of adb logcat while you use your application to see the violations as they happen.

If you find violations that you feel are problematic, there are a variety of tools to help solve them: threads, Handler, AsyncTask, IntentService, etc. But don't feel compelled to fix everything that StrictMode finds. In particular, many cases of disk access are often necessary during the normal activity lifecycle. Use StrictMode to find things you did by accident. Network requests on the UI thread are almost always a problem, though.

StrictMode is not a security mechanism and is not guaranteed to find all disk or network accesses. While it does propagate its state across process boundaries when doing Binder calls, it's still ultimately a best effort mechanism. Notably, disk or network access from JNI calls won't necessarily trigger it. Future versions of Android may catch more (or fewer) operations, so you should never leave StrictMode enabled in applications distributed on Google Play.

Summary

Nested Classes
class StrictMode.ThreadPolicy StrictMode policy applied to a certain thread. 
class StrictMode.VmPolicy StrictMode policy applied to all threads in the virtual machine's process. 
Public Methods
static StrictMode.ThreadPolicy allowThreadDiskReads()
A convenience wrapper that takes the current StrictMode.ThreadPolicy from getThreadPolicy(), modifies it to permit disk reads, and sets the new policy with setThreadPolicy(StrictMode.ThreadPolicy), returning the old policy so you can restore it at the end of a block.
static StrictMode.ThreadPolicy allowThreadDiskWrites()
A convenience wrapper that takes the current StrictMode.ThreadPolicy from getThreadPolicy(), modifies it to permit both disk reads & writes, and sets the new policy with setThreadPolicy(StrictMode.ThreadPolicy), returning the old policy so you can restore it at the end of a block.
static void enableDefaults()
Enable the recommended StrictMode defaults, with violations just being logged.
static StrictMode.ThreadPolicy getThreadPolicy()
Returns the current thread's policy.
static StrictMode.VmPolicy getVmPolicy()
Gets the current VM policy.
static void noteSlowCall(String name)
For code to note that it's slow.
static void setThreadPolicy(StrictMode.ThreadPolicy policy)
Sets the policy for what actions on the current thread should be detected, as well as the penalty if such actions occur.
static void setVmPolicy(StrictMode.VmPolicy policy)
Sets the policy for what actions in the VM process (on any thread) should be detected, as well as the penalty if such actions occur.
[Expand]
Inherited Methods
From class java.lang.Object

Public Methods

public static StrictMode.ThreadPolicy allowThreadDiskReads ()

Added in API level 9

A convenience wrapper that takes the current StrictMode.ThreadPolicy from getThreadPolicy(), modifies it to permit disk reads, and sets the new policy with setThreadPolicy(StrictMode.ThreadPolicy), returning the old policy so you can restore it at the end of a block.

Returns
  • the old policy, to be passed to setThreadPolicy to restore the policy.

public static StrictMode.ThreadPolicy allowThreadDiskWrites ()

Added in API level 9

A convenience wrapper that takes the current StrictMode.ThreadPolicy from getThreadPolicy(), modifies it to permit both disk reads & writes, and sets the new policy with setThreadPolicy(StrictMode.ThreadPolicy), returning the old policy so you can restore it at the end of a block.

Returns

public static void enableDefaults ()

Added in API level 9

Enable the recommended StrictMode defaults, with violations just being logged.

This catches disk and network access on the main thread, as well as leaked SQLite cursors and unclosed resources. This is simply a wrapper around setVmPolicy(StrictMode.VmPolicy) and setThreadPolicy(StrictMode.ThreadPolicy).

public static StrictMode.ThreadPolicy getThreadPolicy ()

Added in API level 9

Returns the current thread's policy.

public static StrictMode.VmPolicy getVmPolicy ()

Added in API level 9

Gets the current VM policy.

public static void noteSlowCall (String name)

Added in API level 11

For code to note that it's slow. This is a no-op unless the current thread's StrictMode.ThreadPolicy has detectCustomSlowCalls() enabled.

Parameters
name a short string for the exception stack trace that's built if when this fires.

public static void setThreadPolicy (StrictMode.ThreadPolicy policy)

Added in API level 9

Sets the policy for what actions on the current thread should be detected, as well as the penalty if such actions occur.

Internally this sets a thread-local variable which is propagated across cross-process IPC calls, meaning you can catch violations when a system service or another process accesses the disk or network on your behalf.

Parameters
policy the policy to put into place

public static void setVmPolicy (StrictMode.VmPolicy policy)

Added in API level 9

Sets the policy for what actions in the VM process (on any thread) should be detected, as well as the penalty if such actions occur.

Parameters
policy the policy to put into place