Location in Foreground service with Background permission VS in app only permissions Android Q

Question

I am verifying my location service compatibility with Android Q but I am a little unsure how my app is going to react since in my testing I have seen not difference when granting Background permission vs Only while app is running.

Coming off this statement from the Q migration documentation

An app is considered to be in the background unless one of its activities is visible or the app is running a foreground service.

Since the location service is a foreground service does the difference in permission even matter in this case?

Answer 1

Well it's a bit of a tricky question.

When running location foreground service on Q you need "while app running" permission + to declare in the manifest this foreground service is of type location. Your app has no need of the background permission.

If your app do asks for background permission, the user can get suspicious and reject any location permission :( So it is not recommended to ask the user for permissions you don't need.

highly recommend to watch this video from the google IO: Updating Your Apps for Location Permission Changes in Android Q (Google I/O'19)

You can read more about t here: documantation

And you can see googles example project on GitHub for location updates on Q with foreground service here :LocationUpdatesForegroundService

Answer 2

You just need run foreground service instead of background. Otherwise your app will crash during background services start when there is no activity on the foreground