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.
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Use the Fused Location Provider to deliver more relevant location information to users.
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Improve the battery efficiency of your users' devices. Follow the guidelines related to background location limits.
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Plot locations of interest on a map, and give users control over what they see on the map.
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Latest news

Introducing the Fused Orientation Provider API: Consistent device orientation for all

Device orientation, or attitude, is used as an input signal for many use cases: virtual or augmented reality, gesture detection, or compass and navigation – any time the app needs the orientation of a device in relation to its surroundings. We’ve

Now in Android: 86 - Google Play at I/O, Pixel Fold and Tablet, Google Developer Expert, & more!

Welcome to Now in Android, your ongoing guide to what’s new and notable in the world of Android development. Today, we’re covering updates from the top three things in Google Play at I/O 2023, Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet, AndroidX releases, what it

Improving urban GPS accuracy for your app

At Android, we want to make it as easy as possible for developers to create the most helpful apps for their users. That’s why we aim to provide the best location experience with our APIs like the Fused Location Provider API (FLP). However, we’ve

Unwrapping the Android 11 Beta, plus more developer updates

Today, we’re unwrapping the Beta release for Android 11 as well as the latest updates for developers from Kotlin coroutines, to progress on the Jetpack Compose toolkit, to faster builds in Android Studio, even a refreshed experience for the Play

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.
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Sample to demonstrate best practices for fetching user's current location.
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Sample to demonstrate best practices for recieving location updates.
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Sample to demonstrate how to access location or recieve location updates when app is in background.
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Sample to demonstrate how to create and monitor geofences.
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Sample to demonstrate best practices for user activity Recognition.
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Get the last known location