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I develop an Android app for people to take pictures, and these pictures must be geolocalized.

If ony the camera app asks for GPS, then the GPS signal is lost every time the user exits the camera app. There are many closed-source apps to "keep" the signal (example: GPS Locker).

So, I would like my app to have such a "GPS fix signal keeper", but with these requirements:

  • Running in the background, my own activities should not kick the fix out
  • Open source (Apache 2.0 compatible), as I want to integrate it inside my app
  • Preferably a library, but an app from which I could copy/paste is OK too
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Instead of keeping the GPS alive to eat all your battery, you might wish to look into Fine Geotag. When enabled, this automatically fires as soon as a photo was taken (even if the camera app is closed then), and takes care to put the Geotag into the file's Exif data:

Fine Geotag
Fine Geotag (source: Google Play; click image for larger variant)

It doesn't fit all your requirements to the latest point, but should be acceptable:

  • Running in the background, my own activities should not kick the fix out: Yes, that's the basic idea :)
  • Open source: Yes
  • Apache 2.0 compatible: Ahem, no. GPL.
  • Preferably a library: No, but …
  • an app from which I could copy/paste is OK too: Well, somehow. Just without the copy-paste. No interaction required, but achieves the same goal: the pictures get geotagged, which is what you're after (unless I misinterpreted your question).

I have not tried the app myself (plan to for about a year already, but never made it), so it might well be you can copy-paste from the (optional) popup you can enable. The app is really well rated (~4.5 stars) and from a reputed developer (M66B = Marcel Bokhorst, the dev of XPrivacy, Netguard, and more). You also can find the app at Github.

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  • fires as soon as a photo was taken <- So that's too late, right? Getting a GPS fix usally takes about 10 seconds.
    – Nicolas Raoul ♦
    Commented Mar 17, 2016 at 2:41
  • Depends on the accuracy you need. And apart from that, this way the photos at least get a location tag at all (without the user keeping the camera app open, and without relying on the camera app to tag it even if the fix comes a bit late). There are several "GPS keep-awakers" in my GPS Tools list, but I couldn't figure the license for any of them.
    – Izzy
    Commented Mar 17, 2016 at 8:00

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