android studio sdk 18 request location access

However, we only previously needed to define within our application manifest file - now we must request this permission at runtime. Now, this isn’t a new permission - in fact, it’s been around since API level 1. We can do this by checking for the ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION permission. īefore we try to kick off our foreground service we need to ensure that we have the required permission from the user to do so. This can be done by making use of the foregroundServiceType when declaring your service within your manifest file. To begin with, any service of this kind that makes use of the users location needs to be declared as a location foreground service.

When your application requires access to this location data, it’s important to let your user know why when accessing it. If you’re utilising a foreground service to handle this functionality then we’ll only need foreground access to the users location, as there’s no reason for us to access the users location from the background (we’ll cover the case where we may not be using a foreground service in the next section.). For example, maybe your app delivers navigation to the user - once the user navigates to their home screen from your app, you’ll want to continue having access to their location in-order to continue serving navigation to them. There may be cases where an application requires access to the users location whilst there is a continuation of user-initiated actions. In this post I want to take a quick dive into how these changes will effect apps, along with what we need to do to adapt to these changes. This gives our users more control of when they wish apps to be able to access their location - allowing them to restricting it to only when the app is currently in use. Note: You can find the code for this article here.Īs outlined in the beta release notes for Android Q, one of the changes we are seeing introduced is the way in which we work with user locations inside of our applications - these changes affect the access of the location in both the foreground and background. In this set of articles I’m going to be diving into each one of these so that we are fully prepared for getting our apps ready!

With this version of Android comes a collection of exciting changes which we need to get our apps ready for.

Last week we saw the announcement of the Android Q beta release

Android studio sdk 18 request location access