Cordova Background Geolocation Plugin

Introduction

Cross-platform geolocation for Cordova and Capacitor with battery-saving "circular region monitoring" and "stop detection"

This plugin can be used for geolocation when the app is running in the foreground or background. It is more battery and data efficient than html5 geolocation. It can be used side by side with other geolocation providers (eg. html5 navigator.geolocation).

This project is based on @mauron85/cordova-plugin-background-geolocation, which in turn was based on the original cordova-background-geolocation plugin by christocracy. Hayl Ltd have taken on responsibility for hosting it and will be maintaining it and merging PRs from the community. If you have any fixes, features or updates that you would like included, please do raise a PR or issue on the GitHub repository.

ATENTION: This project changes the package name from it's parents. The words are the same but in a different order, which is easy to miss and can cause some confusion

We are also looking to maintainers to help with this, so that the project does not end up orphaned. If you are interested in helping out with maintaining the project, please see the pinned discussion at GitHub.

The NPM package can be found at cordova-background-geolocation-plugin.

Documentation

Installing the plugin

Note: for non AndroidX project please use version 1.x of this plugin. Version 2.x and on will support AndroidX.

Note: this plugin can be installed on a Capacitor project and it is tested to be working as expected, some configuration may need to be done differently than below according to how Capacitor configuration is implemented.

Note: for Android 14+ there's a need to let Google know why the app needs to use the location and have a video link when uploading for the first time to play console. It takes some time to approve and after that there's no need to do it again. This is related to FOREGROUND_SERVICE_LOCATION premission.

Note: for Android 13+ there's a need for runtime POST_NOTIFICATION permission request in order to show the icon.

npm install cordova-background-geolocation-plugin
npx cap sync

cordova plugin add cordova-background-geolocation-plugin

You may also want to change default iOS permission prompts and set specific google play version and android support library version for compatibility with other plugins.

Note: Always consult documentation of other plugins to figure out compatible versions.

cordova plugin add cordova-background-geolocation-plugin \
  --variable GOOGLE_PLAY_SERVICES_VERSION=11+ \
  --variable ALWAYS_USAGE_DESCRIPTION="App requires ..." \
  --variable MOTION_USAGE_DESCRIPTION="App requires motion detection"

Note: To apply changes, you must remove and reinstall plugin.

Usage

First, configure the plugin with the settings you require.

BackgroundGeolocation.configure({
    locationProvider: BackgroundGeolocation.ACTIVITY_PROVIDER,
    desiredAccuracy: BackgroundGeolocation.HIGH_ACCURACY,
    stationaryRadius: 50,
    distanceFilter: 50,
    notificationTitle: 'Background tracking',
    notificationText: 'enabled',
    debug: true,
    interval: 10000,
    fastestInterval: 5000,
    activitiesInterval: 10000,
    url: 'http://192.168.81.15:3000/location',
    httpHeaders: {
      'X-FOO': 'bar'
    },
    // customize post properties
    postTemplate: {
      lat: '@latitude',
      lon: '@longitude',
      foo: 'bar' // you can also add your own properties
    }
  });

Then call start() to start location tracking.

A more comprehensive example can be found in the Documentation

Compatibility

Plugin version	Cordova CLI	Cordova Platform Android	Cordova Platform iOS
>1.0.0	8.0.0	8.0.0	6.0.0
>2.0.0	10.0.0	10.0.0	6.0.0

Licence

Apache License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.