Background Microphone access in Android 11 throws exception

Question

Background Access of Microphone via Android App in Android 11 throws the below exception in Logcat:

W/ActivityManager: Foreground service started from background can not have location/camera/microphone access

The same code works perfectly in Android 10 and below. How to fix it?

Answer 1

In Android 11 the following needs to be added in AndroidManifest.xml file for the service which accesses location or camera or microphone in background:

<manifest>
    ...
    <service ...
        android:foregroundServiceType="location|camera|microphone" />
</manifest>

Also, add the following in startForeground method:

Service.startForeground(notification,
        FOREGROUND_SERVICE_TYPE_LOCATION | FOREGROUND_SERVICE_TYPE_CAMERA | FOREGROUND_SERVICE_TYPE_MICROPHONE);

But even after all this, Android 11 won't allow app to get microphone/camera access in the background. The only solution is to use Accessibility feature. After that it will work like before. But Google Play apps have to check policy carefully before using Accessibility feature if it is safe to use else you might risk your app getting suspended for using a workaround.