Android Beacon Library

Why can I not detect beacons?

If your phone is not detecting beacons there are a number of things to check:

1. Is your beacon really advertising? Try an off-the-shelf app like BeaconScope and make sure it is detected.
2. Did you dynamically request and obtain location permission from the user? You cannot detect beacons unless you do so. Read here.
3. If you check app permissions does it confirm that location permission has been granted to your app? Go to Settings -> Applications -> Your App and check the granted permissions.
4. Check your AndroidManifest.xml and verify the neverForLocation attribute is not set on your BLUETOOTH_SCAN permission declaration. Also use AndroidStudio to check the MERGED MANIFEST to see if it is present there, as the neverForLocation attribute may be silently added by third party libraries your app is using. If that attribute is present, beacon detedtions will be blocked by the operating system.
5. Did you set a BeaconParser for the type of beacon you are using? If you are using AltBeacon you don’t need to do this. But if using iBeacon, Eddystone or other formats you do.
6. Is bluetooth turned on in phone settings?
7. Is location turn on in phone settings?
8. If doing monitoring, do you get a call to didDetermineStateForRegion? Does it say you are already inside the region? If so, it may be that your beacon is detected, but the library thinks it is already in the region (it remembers this across restarts) so it never calls didEnterRegion again.
9. Does your hardware beacon advertise a non-standard manufacturer ID? This can cause scan filters (required on Samsung) to fail to detect. Fixing this means finding the custom manufacturer ide and adding that to the BeaconParser in use.
10. If you are not detecting after some period in the background, you may be running into OS limitations. Read here about Android 8+ limitations and here about custom power saver systems especially as implemented by Nokia and Chinese phone OEMs.
11. Are you using the latest version of this library? The Android Beacon Library is updated regularly to account of Android OS changes that often affect the ability to detect beacons in various conditions. Set your build.gradle file to point to the latest version of this library, either with implementation 'org.altbeacon:android-beacon-library:2+' or by checking the latest version on the list at Maven Central and specifying that exact version in your build.gradle file.

If you have gone through the list above and still cannot get detection working in your custom app, you might open a new question on StackOverflow.com to get help. You will need to show your custom code and describe everything in the above list that you have checked and eliminated as a possibility. Please describe exactly what beacon detection callback methods you see and do not see.

If you suspect a problem with the library itself, please first reproduce the issue with the the reference app, then open a Github issue on the library repo that describes how to reproduce. Please also include what you have tried on the troubleshooting list above.