One of the unique features of mobile applications is location awareness. Mobile users take their devices with them everywhere, and adding location awareness to your app offers users a more contextual experience. The location APIs available in Google Play services facilitate adding location awareness to your app with automated location tracking, wrong-side-of-the-street detection, geofencing, and activity recognition.

Development resources

Declare permissions and make requests depending on the use cases of your app's features.
Use the Fused Location Provider to deliver more relevant location information to users.
Improve the battery efficiency of your users' devices. Follow the guidelines related to background location limits.
Plot locations of interest on a map, and give users control over what they see on the map.

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Additional resources

To learn more about requesting access to location information in your app, see the following additional resources:

Samples

Location samples are part of Android OS Platform Samples . Refer to the location module in Android OS platform Samples and follow instructions on how to run samples.
Sample to demonstrate best practices for requesting location permissions.
Sample to demonstrate best practices for fetching user's current location.
Sample to demonstrate best practices for recieving location updates.
Sample to demonstrate how to access location or recieve location updates when app is in background.
Sample to demonstrate how to create and monitor geofences.
Sample to demonstrate best practices for user activity Recognition.