Turn on location services without navigating to settings page

Question

Against the traditional approach of prompting user to go to the settings page and enable location services and come back again, I have noticed a simpler way of doing the same in some of the latest apps.

Referring to below screenshot, it prompts a dialog to user to enable the location services with just one click and it works in those apps.

How can I achieve the same?

Answer 1

This dialog is created by LocationSettingsRequest.Builder available in the Google Play Services.

You need to add a dependency to your app build.gradle:

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-location:10.0.1'

Then you can use this minimal example:

private void displayLocationSettingsRequest(Context context) {
    GoogleApiClient googleApiClient = new GoogleApiClient.Builder(context)
            .addApi(LocationServices.API).build();
    googleApiClient.connect();

    LocationRequest locationRequest = LocationRequest.create();
    locationRequest.setPriority(LocationRequest.PRIORITY_HIGH_ACCURACY);
    locationRequest.setInterval(10000);
    locationRequest.setFastestInterval(10000 / 2);

    LocationSettingsRequest.Builder builder = new LocationSettingsRequest.Builder().addLocationRequest(locationRequest);
    builder.setAlwaysShow(true);

    PendingResult<LocationSettingsResult> result = LocationServices.SettingsApi.checkLocationSettings(googleApiClient, builder.build());
    result.setResultCallback(new ResultCallback<LocationSettingsResult>() {
        @Override
        public void onResult(LocationSettingsResult result) {
            final Status status = result.getStatus();
            switch (status.getStatusCode()) {
                case LocationSettingsStatusCodes.SUCCESS:
                    Log.i(TAG, "All location settings are satisfied.");
                    break;
                case LocationSettingsStatusCodes.RESOLUTION_REQUIRED:
                    Log.i(TAG, "Location settings are not satisfied. Show the user a dialog to upgrade location settings ");

                    try {
                        // Show the dialog by calling startResolutionForResult(), and check the result
                        // in onActivityResult().
                        status.startResolutionForResult(MainActivity.this, REQUEST_CHECK_SETTINGS);
                    } catch (IntentSender.SendIntentException e) {
                        Log.i(TAG, "PendingIntent unable to execute request.");
                    }
                    break;
                case LocationSettingsStatusCodes.SETTINGS_CHANGE_UNAVAILABLE:
                    Log.i(TAG, "Location settings are inadequate, and cannot be fixed here. Dialog not created.");
                    break;
            }
        }
    });
}

You can find the complete example here.