What Is a Daemon Thread and What Are Its Use Cases?

Alexander Ross
Alexander Ross
• • 7 min read

Daemon Threads Are Typically Used to Perform Services for Your Application/Applet (Such as Loading the "Fiddley Bits"). Daemon Threads Are Terminated by the...

What Is a Daemon Thread and What Are Its Use Cases?
Daemon threads are typically used to perform services for your application/applet (such as loading the "fiddley bits"). Daemon threads are terminated by the JVM when there are no longer any user threads running, including the main thread of execution.

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Also asked, what is the use of daemon thread?

Daemon thread is a low priority thread (in context of JVM) that runs in background to perform tasks such as garbage collection (gc) etc., they do not prevent the JVM from exiting (even if the daemon thread itself is running) when all the user threads (non-daemon threads) finish their execution.

Also, what is thread daemon? A daemon thread is a thread that does not prevent the JVM from exiting when the program finishes but the thread is still running. An example for a daemon thread is the garbage collection. You can use the setDaemon(boolean) method to change the Thread daemon properties before the thread starts.

Also asked, how do you create a daemon thread?

Java Daemon Thread Examples

  1. You can make any java thread as daemon thread.
  2. Daemon threads will be terminated by the JVM when there are none of the other threads running, it includs main thread of execution as well.
  3. To specify that a thread is a daemon thread, call the setDaemon method with the argument true.

What is difference between user thread and daemon thread?

The main difference between a user thread and a daemon thread is that your Java program will not finish execution until one of the user thread is live. On the other hand, a daemon thread doesn't get that preference, JVM will exit and close the Java program even if there is a daemon thread running in the background.

Related Question Answers

What is daemon process?

A daemon is a long-running background process that answers requests for services. The term originated with Unix, but most operating systems use daemons in some form or another. In Unix, the names of daemons conventionally end in "d". Some examples include inetd , httpd , nfsd , sshd , named , and lpd .

Must Read

Is the main thread a daemon thread?

Daemon thread in java. When a thread is marked as daemon thread, JVM doesn't wait it to finish to terminate the program. Thread.setDaemon(true) is used to create a daemon thread in java. This method should be invoked before the thread is started otherwise it will throw IllegalThreadStateException .
Alexander Ross

Alexander Ross

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Alexander Ross has covered the video game industry for a decade, writing deep dives on game design, esports tournaments, VR developments, and gaming culture.