SkieCan a student stop the Skie app from running in the background?
No. The Skie app cannot be stopped by the user, and a watchdog restarts the background service if it ever ends. The device also reports presence about every four minutes and is exempt from battery optimisation. Missing check-ins are shown to the admin as a breach.
Many students believe that if they can stop an app from running, its rules stop. Skie is designed so that this does not hold. First, Android's controls for stopping the app are disabled for it, so Force stop and Disable cannot be used.
Second, Skie runs as a background service with a watchdog worker. If the main process is ended by the system for some reason, the watchdog restarts it. Third, the app asks for a battery optimisation exemption so Android does not put it to sleep to save power. Location permission is granted automatically during provisioning, so there is no prompt for a student to refuse.
Fourth, enforcement does not depend on the app being awake at every second. Policy is applied by Android itself, since Skie is the device owner, and cached rules keep working offline. When the screen turns on after a stale period, or when internet returns, the device syncs instantly.
Fifth, the admin has a check. A repeating alarm about every four minutes reports presence. If a device goes quiet, it moves through the Due, Overdue and Offline unusual states, and a missing check-in is a breach in the breach centre. The thresholds are editable.
Practical tip: use the last seen timestamp and the silent share in insights to spot devices that have gone quiet, then follow up on those first.