A “daemon” is any program or service that runs in a computer’s background. Daemons can be used for a wide variety of purposes, including file serving and email. While the user rarely notices daemons, they do appear in the Processes list in the Windows Task Manager and the user is able to disable them at any time.

 

How Daemons Work

Daemons work by running in the computer’s background and handling data between the operating system and a foreground service. For example, if a daemon is used to handle email, it runs in the computer’s background and automatically accesses computer files that store the email server’s name as well as the user’s email address and password. Likewise, the daemon takes emails that the user’s email client receives and saves a copy of them in the program’s storage folder. While the daemon is constantly accessing these files and folders, the user does not see numerous directories on his/her screen.

 

Applications

In addition to email and file serving, daemons can also be used to run disk operations such as disk mounting, other operations such as print spooling, program management, and even anti-virus applications. Although all of these applications include a foreground user interface that the user can directly access commands from, daemons are used to access the temporary folders that the program uses and are able to change a folder’s settings from temporary to permanent and vice versa.