Overview

Google's Background Location Access Policy requires specific disclosures and demonstrations if you want to use background location access in your Android apps. To avoid these policies you would like to turn off location services for your Android app.

Solution

Note that these changes will only affect your Android app and will not disable location services for your iOS apps. For apps that have already been published with the background location permissions, when creating a new release, you may have to make sure to not include previous APKs in your release. This is described in Google's articles Declare permissions for your app and Prepare and roll out a release.

Apps that were created prior to February 19, 2021 had Background Location Services turned on by default. Apps that were created after that date have Background Locations Services turned off by default and must be enabled in the CMS if desired.

1. Log in to the CMS Platform 
   
   
2. Under "Apps", select the app you want to change, go to the "Publishing" section, and scroll down to the "App info" part
   
   
3. Just above "Pricing and Availability" you'll see the option "Allow Background Location Services to continually detect your users' locations".  Click the selector so that this option is deactivated:
   
   
   
   
   
4. Save your changes
   
   
5. Republish your app

Consequences of turning off background location access

Your Android app will no longer provide location-based push notifications that depend on background location access (Geofencing)

If you have the application opened in the foreground (visible) then location functionality like Send Point will work as before even with background location disabled, provided basic location permission has been granted.

Review the article about location filters to learn about the differences between these two notification methods.  

iOS apps are not affected by this change; switching off background location access only affects your Android app.  

If you do not use background location access, then turning it off will not have any impact on your app's functionality.

If you do need to use this feature, then please refer to Turning on location services in BiznessApps