Foreground Services in Android 14: What’s Changing?

Starting with Android 14, there are new requirements and restrictions for foreground services. If your app is using any foreground services, you will need to make some changes to ensure that your app continues to work correctly after you upgrade your target SDK version.

Foreground services are kind of services that perform operations providing a notification for the user. Here you can learn more about definition and various use cases.

Foreground services appeared in Android O (API 26). The main difference between Services and Foreground services are:

• Foreground Services must display a notification to the user
• Foreground Services have a higher priority than other types of services

The foreground service type parameter was introduced in Android 12 (API level 31)

It was needed as Android 12 introduced new restrictions on foreground services, which are designed to improve battery life and user privacy.

In Android 14, developers are required to declare a foreground service type for each foreground service in the manifest. In addition, it is necessary to declare exact permission for the type (or combination of types) which you declared.

In order to make an app with foreground services Android 14 compatible, there are three things you need to do:

1. Set service type in Manifest
2. Specify new permissions
3. Update startForeground() function with foregroundServiceType parameter

Set service type in Manifest

To declare a foreground service type, add the android:foregroundServiceType attribute to the <service> element in your manifest. For example, the following code declares a foreground service of type dataSync:

<service
    android:name=".YourForegroundService"
    android:foregroundServiceType="dataSync" />

All available types can be found here.

If service type is not specified, you will get an exception: MissingForegroundServiceTypeException: Starting FGS without a type

Specify new permissions

You must also specify the appropriate permission for the foreground service type. For example, the following code requests the permission for foreground services of type dataSync:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.FOREGROUND_SERVICE_DATA_SYNC" />

Does it mean that you don’t need usual FOREGROUND_SERVICE permission anymore?

Yes, you are right. All you need is to replace the old FOREGROUND_SERVICE permission with the new one (or a few, if you have services with different types).

Update startForeground function

Lastly, you also need to specify the service type in startForeground() function which is located in onStartCommand() function of the service class.

Specifying the type requires Android Q, so you’ll have to wrap it into a statement in order to use the old startForeground() for android versions lower than Q. If your minSDK is 29 or higher — just use the one with foreground service type.

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.Q) {
    startForeground(1, notification.build(), ServiceInfo.FOREGROUND_SERVICE_TYPE_DATA_SYNC)
} else {
    startForeground(1, notification.build(),)
}

Now we are prepared for API 34? Not yet. There is something else…

Work manager workers

Starting in Android 14 (API level 34), all long-running workers must be foreground services.

If you use WorkManager worker to perform some background tasks, you also need to set a serviceType for that as it is a foreground service too since Android 14.

To set up a foreground service for a your worker, you must first add the following service to your AndroidManifest.xml. It is the same for all workers:

<service 
    android:name="androidx.work.impl.foreground.SystemForegroundService" 
    android:foregroundServiceType="shortService" />

I’ve specified shortService type as my worker is only for one network call. You may specify any type that suits your requirements.

Like in a service you must specify foreground service type here in setForeground() too. The worker’s setForeground() method takes a ForegroundInfo object as a parameter which contains the notification that will be displayed to the user and now it also takes a serviceType parameter.

Similarly to setForeground() in a service, it requires higher SDK — Android 14, so you have to wrap it in a statement and use the old startForeground() on lower Android versions.

Here is an example of how to set the foreground service type in worker’s doWork() function:

val notification = … 

val foregroundInfo = if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.UPSIDE_DOWN_CAKE) { 
    ForegroundInfo(Random().nextInt(), notification, FOREGROUND_SERVICE_TYPE_SHORT_SERVICE) 
} else { 
    ForegroundInfo(Random().nextInt(), notification) 
} 

setForeground(foregroundInfo)

Finally, your foreground services are prepared for API 34 🎉.

Foreground service types are required | Android Developers

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