Develop Reference

How to Show Notifications when get close to Beacon even if the app is closed?

I have created a mini App that helps me playing with beacons.
-what i have done so far-
So until now, I have successfully connected my App to the beacon, made 2 texts, so when I'm in the app and get in the beacon's range, the texts are changing so I can see that, move 2m away or turning the beacon upside down so it simulates Out of range, and it will show the message that I'm not in the range anymore.
So far so good, I have also successfully made the app to show notifications when I get close to the beacon, and when I click the notification to open a second activity.
-the problem-
Now, I want to show a notification when I get in the beacon's range, and the app is closed (not in the background). And after, when I click on that Notification to open my app / open App Google Play's Page if not installed.
I have searched on the internet but I haven't found anything conclusive.
If you guys know anything, or have you accomplished this task, it would be great if you can help with it.
If you need more info like, my activities code I can upload it, but I considered unimportant.
Thanks!

Two points:
In order to make a phone react to a beacon without your app installed (e.g. to launch a PlayStore page) you need an app prei-nstalled on all phones that does this for you. The Google Play Services app used to do this through the Nearby feature, but it was discontinued in Nov. 2018 because of spam concerns. Since then this is no longer possible to do.
If you do have your app installed it is a straightforward process to detect in the background and send notifications. The Android Beacon Library provides instructions here:. https://altbeacon.github.io/android-beacon-library/notifications.html

You could create a BoradcastReceiver that intercept the android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED.
In that way, you can launch a part of your app when you turn on the device.
There, you can use a Service or something that can manage the interactions with Beacons.
(BTW, i never worked with Beacons, i don't know what are the policies that you must follow).
If you don't need to launch the app when the device is turned on, anyway you can use a simple Service
Here the link to the documentation of receivers documentation.

Disable notifications in Android

I have a live streaming app where you can be recording for hours and when the user receives a text message or a phone call, the vibration is trnaslated into sound and rippling video on the streaming.
Is it possible to somehow programmatically disable all notifications or do I have to ask the user to do so by himself?

You cannot control notifications from other apps. There is indeed a solution for rooted devices.
'Standards' part in this guide says:
One of the unfortunate problems Android users face is that there is no
centralized control for how notifications work. This means that if
there is an application prompting you with a notification, short of
uninstalling the application, there isn’t much you can do. Starting in
Android 4.1, users received a buried binary setting to 'Turn off
notifications’ for a specific app.

No, unfortunately not. Perhaps on rooted devices, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯. Best way seems to navigate the user to the related setting to disable all notifications, as you have also mentioned.

Is it common practice to ask users whether they wish to receive push notifications?

I'm new to the Android platform. Apple requires every iOS app to ask for and confirm push notifications, but I have not noticed any apps that I've downloaded on my new Android phone prompting me if I want to receive push notifications. It just automatically registers me for them. Is this normal Android convention, to automatically register users for push notifications, assuming they can disable them later?
In my own Android application, should I be prompting users and asking if they want them before I register them? Obviously it would be the polite thing to do to ask permission before signing them up for push notifications, but if that's not common practice I see no reason to potentially lose some receivers of them.

Making decisions for the user is actually a strong Android guideline. Here is a list of the "Android Design Principles", written by Google. As you can see "Decide for me, but let me have the final say" fits the behavior that you've mentioned.
Some things to keep in mind when discussing Android notifications:
Users can disable your app's notifications in their OS settings. If they really don't want to hear from your app, they'll disable notification's there.
User context. You don't know what context the user is installing your app in. Users who are on a crowded train, relaxing on their day off, hanging out at a friend's place, or maybe waiting for a flight, all want different things out of your app at the time of installation. The guy on a crowded train is going to want your app to work immediately, with very minimal setup, while the guy relaxing at home may not mind a long setup process.
Your setup process can have a significant impact on your user retention. This Forbes article briefly discusses intrusive setup forums and their impact on app uninstalls.
At the end of the day however, it all depends on the needs of your audience. If you're targeting professionals, then they might be willing to put in some extra time up-front if they believe your app could help make their job easier. If you're targeting a casual gamer, you'll want them to get in and rolling as fast as possible. It's up to you to decide how best to serve your audience.
Here's a video from Google I/O 2013 that discusses the Android Design Principals in greater detail.
Hope I was able to provide some insight.

Sadly, it does not appear to be a very common practice. I've installed several Android applications that will randomly give me a notification in the middle of the night. I've recently made a new habit of disabling notifications for every new app that I install unless I really want notifications from it. I think your application would result in a much better user experience if you prompted them for notifications. You could also offer configurations for which notifications they wish to receive. If other apps were like this I might choose to receive some notifications instead of globally turning them off.

Sony SmartWatch 2 Control & Notification for the same app possible?

I was trying to port my existing app from SW 1 to SW 2 and stumbled upon the limitation that it is not allowed to have notifications and a control for the same app (even when setting LAUNCH_MODE to CONTROL).
As a workaround I tried to register 2 services, one for the notification and one for the control. As they share the same app package name, this didn't work and only the first that registered was available.
Is there a better workaround?
Or will this limitation be addressed in a future update? My app really depends on both, the notifications and the control.

A distant workaround may be to use only the Control, and build some sort of a notification mechanism as part of the Control. I did exactly that in my Log app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eir.log
The notification mechanism is triggered by a different event, in the same BroadcastReceiver. Works wonderfully for me.

I believe this is indeed not possible today. One option for you would be to start up your control extension from a notification list item. So from where you read your notification you can enable a menu and then in that option start up your control. Have a look at the SMS app to get an idea.

Not possible and no workaround available. We have to wait for Sony to fix this issue though they haven't mentioned when they will address it.

We have posted a blog on Sony Developer World regarding this topic:
http://developer.sonymobile.com/2013/12/26/using-both-the-control-notification-apis-for-customised-uis-in-your-smartwatch-2-extension-code/

Detect if an app was uninstalled

Is there a way to get a system notification when an app has been uninstalled?
I would like to maintain a table of all clients' info currently using my app. However, that seems impossible if there is no way to detect this event.
The first solution I can think of is to have an always running service in the background listening for android.intent.action.PACKAGE_REMOVED. But then would that service be killed once the uninstallation process has ended, or would it be stopped just before the process has kicked off? Also even if this is a solution it's has the potential to put off a lot of people when they realise that part of the app is running in the background.
Any suggestions? Thanks!

You could simply do it the other way round and maintain a table of users actively using your app. Just call a webservice at a point in the program that show it is active. If an app isn't used for a certain time mark it as inactive.

The documentation for the PACKAGE_REMOVED action says the following:
The package that is being uninstalled does not receive this Intent.
So you can monitor for other applications being uninstalled but not your own.
So you'll probably need track who is still using your application, not who has stopped using it. If you don't want the overhead of having your own server to do this you could use a free service like Flurry.

From Android document, the app uninstalled by user can't not get
Intent.ACTION_PACKAGE_REMOVE
But we can use other method to implement this feature. We all know that there is a directory named with your package name under the /data/data directory after your app installed by user. If your app is uninstalled by user, the root directory of your app(/data/data/com.example.yourappname) will be removed by system. The remove action happen immediately when user click "uninstall", and the directory will be removed by framework package manager system.
So, we can monitor the existence of your app data directory(which usually /data/data/com.example.yourappname) to detect if your app uninstalled by user.
In order to monitor this directory, we have to fork a detached process from JNI.
In this new fork process, we can use Linux system api inotify(7) or access(3) to determine the existence of app's data directory.
Here is a workable implementation. But it got the permission problem when try to send an intent to start system browser on high version Android device. I have no idea how to bypass this. However the example above is enough for your question.
Hope it will be helpful!

Android doesn't provide an inbuilt function for tracking the app uninstall.
Notification can be used as an alternate way to track the app uninstall. For this send notification on the app and track the status of the notification. Count the number of undelivered notification for a particular time period. If status of undelivered notification doesn't change in that particular time period, then consider that the app has been uninstalled from the device.
For example, i have used a cron script which run every 3 days and check the status of last 10 notifications delivered to the device (2 notifications are sent in a day). If all of these 10 notifications have status "undelivered", then the app is considered to be uninstalled from the device.