Google Play rejected because of “Unable to verify background location feature in app”

Please provide the following:

  1. SDK Version: 39
  2. Platforms(Android/iOS):

We’re trying to publish our app to the Google Play Store, but when adding apk version, it tells we’re asking for permissions requiring confidentiality rules, even though we never ask for those, and when installing the .apk directly on my phone, it never asks for any permission.

We have on google play console, a warning because I have this:

android.permission.ACCESS_BACKGROUND_LOCATION
android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION
android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION

Now google is asking to explain why we’re using the background location feature in app but we don’t use background location feature in our app. Any idea how to solve this issue?

you can opt out in sdk 40, more info in this pr [location] Make background location opt-in permission by byCedric · Pull Request #10989 · expo/expo · GitHub. also see the " Background location is now an opt-in permission on Android" section on Expo SDK 40 is now available. Today we’re announcing our fourth and… | by Brent Vatne | Exposition.

i’d recommend upgrading to sdk 40 and submitting a new binary. more info on android permissions in https://docs.expo.io/versions/latest/sdk/permissions/#permissions-on-android

Hey @lkalimut ,

In addition, we’ve heard that ensuring you don’t have any binaries with the background location permission in any of the release tracks could be of help here. We’ve yet to confirm this but a user has said that after building a new sdk40 binary and removing old binaries from tracks, they’ve got accepted.

Cheers,
Adam

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.