Detecting BLE beacons in the background

On latest Android versions background operation of services and background access to location permission is restricted.

First of all the application needs two additional permissions in the manifest:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.FOREGROUND_SERVICE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_BACKGROUND_LOCATION" />

Note that the app must ask the user to grant ACCESS_BACKGROUND_LOCATION permission. It is not required for the FOREGROUND_SERVICE permission.

To have the SDK be able to scan beacons in the background the following call must be made before calling mBeaconManager.start().

mBeaconManager.setForegroundServiceNotification(BackgroundNotification.getForegroundServiceNotification(applicationContext), NOTIFICATION_ID_INT)

Example implementation of a helper class BackgroundNotification can be found here: https://github.com/MGasztold/ubudu_contextual_interactions_sample/blob/main/app/src/main/java/com/ubudu/contextualsample/BackgroundNotification.kt

References:

https://developer.android.com/guide/components/foreground-services

https://developer.android.com/training/location/background