No permission dialog on android.

[mley]

Your Environment

• Plugin version: 5.2.4
• Platform: Android
• Device OS version: 13
• Device manufacturer / model: Samsung Galaxy A22
• Capacitor info (npx cap doctor)

   @capacitor/cli: 5.4.0
  @capacitor/android: 5.4.0
  @capacitor/core: 5.4.0
  @capacitor/ios: 5.4.0

• Plugin config provided to #ready:

  {
    // Geolocation Config
    desiredAccuracy: BackgroundGeolocation.DESIRED_ACCURACY_HIGH,
    desiredOdometerAccuracy: 10,
    locationAuthorizationRequest: 'WhenInUse',
  
    //iOS only
    stationaryRadius: 5,
    showsBackgroundLocationIndicator: true,
    activityType: 3, //ACTIVITY_TYPE_FITNESS
    preventSuspend: true,
  
    //Android only
    allowIdenticalLocations: true,
    foregroundService: true,
    backgroundPermissionRationale: {
      title: this.translateService.instant('LOCATION.ENABLE_LOCATION_TITLE'),
      message: this.translateService.instant('LOCATION.ENABLE_LOCATION_MESSAGE'),
      positiveAction: this.translateService.instant('LOCATION.ALLOW'),
      negativeAction: this.translateService.instant('ENABLE_LOCATION_CANCEL'),
    },
    notification: {
      title: 'Tracking',
      text: 'Tracking your location',
    },
    geofenceModeHighAccuracy: true,
  
    // Application config
    debug: false, // <-- enable this hear sounds for background-geolocation life-cycle.
    logLevel: BackgroundGeolocation.LOG_LEVEL_VERBOSE,
  }

Expected Behavior

When using location services for the first time after a fresh install, there should be a popup to ask for permissions for location and other required permissions. After permissions are granted, we can access location data.

Actual Behavior

No permission dialog was shown. Accessing location data failed.

Context

We're developing a fitness app to track sports activities like running, biking, etc. We're mainly using "foreground" location tracking with watchPosition (meaning: the app is running all the time, maybe it's in the background, maybe not, screen is off, device is locked). Yes, I've read the philosophy of operation for this plugin. Since the open source cordova and capacitor plugin for location tracking to not really work well for our use-case, we tried your plugin, hoping to improve user experience.

The same code below works fine in iOS.

The logs were take from a debug build.

What maybe of concern: We're also using the cordova-health-plugin, which accesses fitness and activity data. I don't know how much of these permissions overlap with your plugin. The cordova-health-plugin will only work properly with a PlayStore release, because of Google Health.

https://github.com/transistorsoft/capacitor-background-geolocation/assets/7995757/ea77ddf9-5118-44d8-9286-a7d4385f49ae

When "Running" was tabbed, the startLocationTracking method of the LocationService is called.

If you need any more info, please let me know.

Code

import { Injectable, OnDestroy } from '@angular/core';
import { BehaviorSubject, Observable, Subject, switchMap } from 'rxjs';
import { LoggingService } from '../../../services/logging.service';
import BackgroundGeolocation, { Subscription } from '@transistorsoft/capacitor-background-geolocation';
import { fromPromise } from 'rxjs/internal/observable/innerFrom';
import { TranslateService } from '@ngx-translate/core';

export interface GpsLocation {
  latitude: number;
  longitude: number;
  altitude: number;
  bearing: number;
}

@Injectable({
  providedIn: 'root',
})
export class LocationService implements OnDestroy {
  private headingSubject = new BehaviorSubject<number | undefined>(undefined);
  public heading$: Observable<number | undefined> = this.headingSubject.asObservable();

  constructor(
    private readonly loggingService: LoggingService,
    private readonly translateService: TranslateService
  ) {}

  ngOnDestroy(): void {
    this.subscriptions.forEach(s => s.remove());
    this.subscriptions.length = 0;
  }

  /**
   * Start continuous location tracking.
   *
   * @returns Observable of locations
   */
  public startLocationTracking(): Observable<GpsLocation> {
    return fromPromise(this.initialize()).pipe(switchMap(() => this.watchLocation()));
  }

  private subject: Subject<GpsLocation>;

  private watchLocation(): Observable<GpsLocation> {
    if (!!this.subject) {
      this.loggingService.warn('watchLocation already running');
      return this.subject.asObservable();
    }

    this.subject = new Subject<GpsLocation>();
    this.loggingService.log('start watchLocation');
    BackgroundGeolocation.watchPosition(
      location => {
        this.loggingService.log('watchPosition location:', location);
        this.headingSubject.next(location.coords.heading);
        this.subject.next({
          latitude: location.coords.latitude,
          longitude: location.coords.longitude,
          altitude: location.coords.altitude,
          bearing: location.coords.heading,
        });
      },
      error => {
        this.loggingService.error('watchPosition error', error);
        this.subject.error(error);
      },
      {
        interval: 1000,
        desiredAccuracy: BackgroundGeolocation.DESIRED_ACCURACY_HIGH,
        persist: true,
      }
    );

    return this.subject.asObservable();
  }

  /**
   * Stop the continuous location tracking.
   */
  public async stopLocationTracking(): Promise<void> {
    this.loggingService.log('stop watchLocation');
    await BackgroundGeolocation.stopWatchPosition();
    await BackgroundGeolocation.stop();

    this.subject.complete();
    this.subject = undefined;
  }

  private subscriptions: Subscription[] = [];

  private async initialize(): Promise<void> {
    if (this.subscriptions.length > 0) {
      this.subscriptions.push(
        BackgroundGeolocation.onLocation(location => {
          this.loggingService.log('onLocation', location);
        })
      );

      this.subscriptions.push(
        BackgroundGeolocation.onMotionChange(event => {
          this.loggingService.log('onMotionChange', event);
        })
      );

      this.subscriptions.push(
        BackgroundGeolocation.onActivityChange(event => {
          this.loggingService.log('onActivityChange', event);
        })
      );

      this.subscriptions.push(
        BackgroundGeolocation.onProviderChange(event => {
          this.loggingService.log('onProviderChange', event);
        })
      );
    }

    const readyState = await BackgroundGeolocation.ready({
      // Geolocation Config
      desiredAccuracy: BackgroundGeolocation.DESIRED_ACCURACY_HIGH,
      desiredOdometerAccuracy: 10,
      locationAuthorizationRequest: 'WhenInUse',

      //iOS only
      stationaryRadius: 5,
      showsBackgroundLocationIndicator: true,
      activityType: 3, //ACTIVITY_TYPE_FITNESS
      preventSuspend: true,

      //Android only
      allowIdenticalLocations: true,
      foregroundService: true,
      backgroundPermissionRationale: {
        title: this.translateService.instant('LOCATION.ENABLE_LOCATION_TITLE'),
        message: this.translateService.instant('LOCATION.ENABLE_LOCATION_MESSAGE'),
        positiveAction: this.translateService.instant('LOCATION.ALLOW'),
        negativeAction: this.translateService.instant('ENABLE_LOCATION_CANCEL'),
      },
      notification: {
        title: 'Tracking',
        text: 'Tracking your location',
      },
      geofenceModeHighAccuracy: true,

      // Application config
      debug: false, // <-- enable this hear sounds for background-geolocation life-cycle.
      logLevel: BackgroundGeolocation.LOG_LEVEL_VERBOSE,
    });

    this.loggingService.log('ready state', readyState);

    const startState = await BackgroundGeolocation.start();

    this.loggingService.log('start state', startState);
  }
}

Debug logs

https://gist.github.com/mley/97d77729cae8706d54a65d70cf28bd73

[mley]

Update: I've run the app after a fresh install again without using the cordova-health-plugin (which asks for permission for physical activity, as this plugin does). When the background location plugin is started, the app asks for the physical activity permission. I allowed access, but no other permissions are requested.

The TSLocationManager again logs

[c.t.l.u.LocationAuthorization$j onPermissionDenied]
⚠️  LocationAuthorization: Permission denied

The same happens when manually granting all related permissions in the Android settings for my app.

[christocracy]

Avoid using .watchPosition().

The plug-in requests permission when you call .start().

Read the wiki "Philosophy of Operation".

[mley]

I've changed the code to not use watchPosition.

Calling .ready() returns successfully, but calling .start() throws an error, that permissions were denied. No dialog to grant permissions is shown. And that all happened before .getCurrentPosition() is called.

All required permissions are already granted manually:

We would really like to license this plugin for multiple apps, if we get it working properly.

[christocracy]

Create for me a simple "hello-world" app which reproduces your problem and share it with me in a public GitHub repo so I can test it.

[mley]

Here's a simple project that reproduces the error: https://github.com/mley/bgloc-hello-world

That was a nice exercise finding the dependency that breaks things. It seems the source of the issue is the presence of the cordova-ble-central plugin. If I remove that, it works fine. We need this plugin to connect to BLE heart rate monitors. I need to check the state of the capacitor bluetooth LE plugin to see if I can get rid of the cordova plugin.

Another solution might be using the slim-version of the plugin ( https://github.com/don/cordova-plugin-ble-central?tab=readme-ov-file#android-permission-conflicts ), but I must admit, that I haven't checked the final permissions in the merged manifest yet.

[christocracy]

You shouldn't be using Cordova plugins with capacitor. The ability to do so is only a crutch until you implement a pure Capacitor version.

[mley]

The same error keeps occurring when using the @capacitor-community/bluetooth-le plugin. I've updated the demo project accordingly.

[christocracy]

You can manually call .requestPermission method.

[mley]

That doesn't work either. requestPermission() only returns

{
    "success": false,
    "status": 2
}

There is no permission dialog and start() still fails with missing permissions.

[mley]

I've updated the sample app. Did you get a chance to check it out?

It just takes a few commands to run it on an Android device:

npm install
npx ionic cap run android

[mley]

I did some more testing and found out, that the issue is indeed related to the capacitor bluetooth plugin, but not the plugin itself, but the permissions in the manifest.

As far as I understand up to certain Android version, apps also needed location permissions to use bluetooth, but later version do not need them. The documentation of the BLE plugins therefore suggests to add following permissions:

 <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION" android:maxSdkVersion="30" />
 <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION" android:maxSdkVersion="30" />

It seems the attribute android:maxSdkVersion="30" makes Android ignore the permission if the SDK version if above 30. If I remove the attribute, the location permission dialog comes up and getting location data works.

Thanks for helping out.