After upgrading my phone to 8.1 Developer Preview my background service no longer starts up properly.
In my long-running service I've implemented a startForeground
method to start the ongoing notification which is called in on create.
@TargetApi(Build.VERSION_CODES.O)
private fun startForeground() {
// Safe call, handled by compat lib.
val notificationBuilder = NotificationCompat.Builder(this, DEFAULT_CHANNEL_ID)
val notification = notificationBuilder.setOngoing(true)
.setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_launcher_foreground)
.build()
startForeground(101, notification)
}
Error message:
11-28 11:47:53.349 24704-24704/$PACKAGE_NAMEE/AndroidRuntime: FATAL EXCEPTION: main
Process: $PACKAGE_NAME, PID: 24704
android.app.RemoteServiceException: Bad notification for startForeground: java.lang.RuntimeException: invalid channel for service notification: Notification(channel=My channel pri=0 contentView=null vibrate=null sound=null defaults=0x0 flags=0x42 color=0x00000000 vis=PRIVATE)
at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1768)
at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:106)
at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:164)
at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:6494)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
at com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(RuntimeInit.java:438)
at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:807)
invalid channel for service notification
, apparently my old channel the DEFAULT_CHANNEL_ID
is no longer appropriate for API 27 I assume. What would be the proper channel? I've tried to look through the documentation
After some tinkering for a while with different solutions i found out that one must create a notification channel in Android 8.1 and above.
private fun startForeground() {
val channelId =
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.O) {
createNotificationChannel("my_service", "My Background Service")
} else {
// If earlier version channel ID is not used
// https://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v4/app/NotificationCompat.Builder.html#NotificationCompat.Builder(android.content.Context)
""
}
val notificationBuilder = NotificationCompat.Builder(this, channelId )
val notification = notificationBuilder.setOngoing(true)
.setSmallIcon(R.mipmap.ic_launcher)
.setPriority(PRIORITY_MIN)
.setCategory(Notification.CATEGORY_SERVICE)
.build()
startForeground(101, notification)
}
@RequiresApi(Build.VERSION_CODES.O)
private fun createNotificationChannel(channelId: String, channelName: String): String{
val chan = NotificationChannel(channelId,
channelName, NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_NONE)
chan.lightColor = Color.BLUE
chan.lockscreenVisibility = Notification.VISIBILITY_PRIVATE
val service = getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE) as NotificationManager
service.createNotificationChannel(chan)
return channelId
}
From my understanding background services are now displayed as normal notifications that the user then can select to not show by deselecting the notification channel.
Update: Also don't forget to add the foreground permission as required Android P:
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.FOREGROUND_SERVICE" />