Android Work manager internal working

Mastering the Internal Working of WorkManager: A Beginner-Friendly Guide

A commonly asked question in Android interviews these days is how WorkManager works internally. This is an important topic because WorkManager is used extensively in the industry to handle background tasks. Let’s understand this in a very simple and easy way.

What is WorkManager?

WorkManager is a Jetpack library that efficiently manages background tasks. Its biggest advantage is that it provides guaranteed execution. Meaning if the task fails for some reason or the device reboots, WorkManager will still retry your task until it is completed.

We commonly use it for tasks that are deferred (do not need to be executed immediately) and demand guaranteed execution, like:

1. Syncing data from the server.
2. Uploading logs.
3. Compressing images in the background.

Internal Working of WorkManager

WorkManager internally works like a Scheduler that uses different APIs for task scheduling. To understand the architecture of WorkManager we have to look at 4 key components:

1. Worker

• Worker is the class in which you write the logic of your background task.