Do Geofences remain active in android after a device reboot

Question

I'm writing an application that needs to use geofencing for when someone enters/exits multiple sites over the lifetime of the application being installed.

My implementation of geofencing (very similar to the second link below) is all working fine when I first install the application, both when moving in/out of the geofences and when using mock locations to simulate it, until a device is rebooted.

On reboot neither mock locations nor actually physically moving in and out of a geofence appears to trigger the event and fire the pending intent to my broadcast receiver.

I have looked at the following three links and have also read quite a bit of the doc's but I can't find a definitive answer to this anywhere that straight up says registered geofences persist or do not persist after a reboot.

These are the links I reviewed on stack overflow: Are Android geofences surviving a reboot?

Android Geofence eventually stop getting transition intents

Do Android Geofences remain active until removed/expired or only until my PendingIntent is launched

If anyone happens to know the answer to whether they stick around post reboot, or has a work around if they do not, it would be much appreciated! My last hope currently is to create a listener for BOOT_COMPLETED and re-register them on start up but id prefer to only do this if absolutely necessary.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Edit: Whilst I have not found a definitive (in writing) answer, I am pretty sure what Mr. TonyC posted is correct, and have opted for that solution. Thanks a lot TonyC!

In case anyone wants to see the solution I have, I listen for the boot complete action when a device is booted, and then re-register all the geofences I need.

This is in the manifest:

<!-- Listen for the device starting up -->
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED"/>

<receiver android:name="com.YOUR.PACKAGE.geofence.BootCompleteReceiver">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED"/>
    </intent-filter>
</receiver>

and then create a broadcast receiver for it which will re-register the geofences on boot:

package com.YOUR.PACKAGE.geofence;

import android.app.PendingIntent.CanceledException;
import android.content.Context;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.support.v4.content.WakefulBroadcastReceiver;

import com.google.android.gms.common.ConnectionResult;
import com.google.android.gms.common.GooglePlayServicesUtil;
import com.google.android.gms.location.Geofence;

public class BootCompleteReceiver extends WakefulBroadcastReceiver
{
    private static final String TAG = "BootCompleteReceiver";

    @Override
    public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent)
    {
        //Do what you want/Register Geofences
    }
}

It's also worth noting, that if you are inside a geofence on boot, this usually will then trigger the geofence's pending intent once the geofence has been registered.

So if for instance, the geofence starts an app, then when you boot a device that happens to be in the geofence, it will also open the app once the boot complete broadcast receiver has registered the geofence, and location services has worked out where you are.

Hope that is some help to someone.

Answer 1

In my experience the geofences do not survive reboot. I use a BOOT_COMPLETED receiver just as you suggest. It works fine.