What criteria do you consider when determining the need to use checked exceptions?

When choosing to use checked exceptions in Java, I consider the following criteria:

• Recoverability: If the calling code can and should handle the exception and continue working, it's better to use a checked exception.
• Method contract: Checked exceptions are explicitly declared in the method signature, helping developers know about potential errors.
• Error frequency: If the error occurs rarely and its handling requires special actions, checked exceptions are suitable.
• Handling complexity: If error handling is mandatory and crucial for correct operation, checked exceptions force the programmer to handle them explicitly.

If the error is unpredictable, critical, or cannot be handled (e.g., runtime errors, programming errors), it's better to use unchecked exceptions.

Example:

public void readFile(String path) throws IOException {
    // IOException is a checked exception, the caller must handle it
}

Here, the checked exception forces the calling code to explicitly handle the input/output error situation.