Impact of Google's April 2026 Policy Change on enableForegroundServiceScanning()

[masanori-taniguchi]

Description

Hi there,

Thank you for maintaining this amazing library.

I am writing to ask about the library's roadmap or recommended workarounds regarding the recent Google Play policy update announced on April 15, 2026.

According to the official announcement ("Policy Bytes: April 15, 2026"), Google is removing geofencing and location/BLE scanning from the approved use cases for Foreground Services:
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/16926792

Currently, our app relies on enableForegroundServiceScanning() to scan for beacons in the background. However, under this new policy, using a Foreground Service for this purpose will likely lead to app rejection or removal from the Google Play Store, unless we pass an extremely strict exception review.

Questions

1. Are there any plans to update the library to support alternative background scanning methods that align with the new Google guidelines (e.g., better integration with WorkManager or JobScheduler for periodic scanning)?
2. If we need to disable enableForegroundServiceScanning() immediately to pass the store review, what is the recommended way to handle background beacon scanning using this library without triggering Google's automated policy flags?

Any guidance, workarounds, or suggestions from the maintainers or the community would be highly appreciated.

Thank you!

[VolodaUa]

Hi,
Looks like Google changed its policy to prevent the forever foreground scanning and was forced to use other ways.
As I understood, it's NOT ok to use foreground service type that has the "location". So we need to override it.
You can do by adding to your minifest file and don't not enable the foreground service logic.

The changes occur when you start foreground scanning.

I actually missed this policy change altogether... and did not adjust the app yet.

Google suggest using the Geofence API or using Device discovery(not sure here)
Looks like the flow will be for the Geofence API:

1. Set geofence trigger(location required...)
2. User enters the zone
3. The system sends a broadcast
4. We can start the foreground service to detect BLE devices. These cases make sense if you need to detect a lot of devices(smart home). The important part here is that we need to stop the service after some time(maybe on exit).
5. Stop foreground BLE scanning - I think on exit, but it looks like we can't have it running for a long time.

The library has different ways of BLE scanning.

1. Peorid scanll job(JobScheduler)
2. Foreground Service
3. Intent scanning.

I currently decided to choose the intent scanning with my own foreground service that will have limitated lifecycle when user inside the building. According to everything, it's Ok for google, but I will see)

As I remember, 1, 3 can wake up your app when it's closed in the background, but have some limitations when you need to monitor(range) beacons for some time, detect proximity, etc.

@davidgyoung Maybe you have any ideas?