Support for Companion device pairing?

[lwinged]

Hello,

I'd like to know if you will integrate this feature to avoid ask the user the location permission ?

https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/companion-device-pairing

My app needs to scan devices but I don't need/want the location permission. (ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION)

My app targets min sdk Android 7

I saw that the scan method has a parameter : requireLocationServicesEnabled

With this parameter can I scan without ask the user for location permission?

Perhaps do you have any solutions about that?

Do I need implement this feature in my app for Android 8+ or the companion devices pairing can be a feature/ an evolution of ble library ?

Thank you very much.

[remonh87]

Hi
I understand your request and I agree that the choice of Google to tie the location permission to ble scanning is not ideal and can raise privacy concerts.

I think it can be a good addition to our library in the future given that the underlying Android library supports it. Also since it works on the background we need to figure out how to nicely integrate it. @werediver do you know if iOS has something that looks like this?

Keep in mind that companion device pairing is a totally different user experience than "normal scanning/connecting/pairing" . Users are offered a dialog of devices in the vicinity and will be provide a dialog to link it to the app.

The requireLocationServicesEnabled parameter just makes sure that the stream throws an exception that you can handle in case the location is not enabled. Reason for this is that on some Android devices (especially Nexus) ble scanning does not yield results when the users has location service off.

On the short term I have other priorities but feel free to contribute to this library. Also I am willing to help out.