Importance of Thread Priority in Java?

In multi-threaded applications, each thread is assigned with a priority. The processor is assigned to the thread by the thread scheduler based on its priority i.e. the highest priority thread is assigned the processor first and so on. The default priority of a thread with a value of '5'. We can get the priority of a thread using the getPriority() method of Thread class.

The three static values defined in the Thread class for the priority of a thread

MAX_PRIORITY

This is the maximum thread priority with a value of 10.

NORM_PRIORITY

This is the default thread priority with a value of 5.

MIN_PRIORITY

This is the minimum thread priority with a value of 1.

Syntax

public final int getPriority()

Example

public class ThreadPriorityTest extends Thread {
   public static void main(String[]args) {
      ThreadPriorityTest thread1 = new ThreadPriorityTest();
      ThreadPriorityTest thread2 = new ThreadPriorityTest();
      ThreadPriorityTest thread3 = new ThreadPriorityTest();
      System.out.println("Default thread priority of thread1: " + thread1.getPriority());
      System.out.println("Default thread priority of thread2: " + thread2.getPriority());
      System.out.println("Default thread priority of thread3: " + thread3.getPriority());
      thread1.setPriority(8);
      thread2.setPriority(3);
      thread3.setPriority(6);
      System.out.println("New thread priority of thread1: " + thread1.getPriority());
      System.out.println("New thread priority of thread2: " + thread2.getPriority());
      System.out.println("New thread priority of thread3: " + thread3.getPriority());
   }
}

Output

Default thread priority of thread1: 5
Default thread priority of thread2: 5
Default thread priority of thread3: 5
New thread priority of thread1: 8
New thread priority of thread2: 3
New thread priority of thread3: 6