App Inventor and Java

How to toggle GPS from within App Inventor calling a Java app

As you know, to toggle GPS from within App Inventor directly is not possible, you only can open the settings window for the user to enable/disable it. And this also is generally not possible with the Android SDK, why see also here: "You can't for security/privacy reasons, you have to forward to location preferences screen and let the user enable/disable it."

However for Android 2.x devices, the GPS can be toggled by exploiting a bug in the power manager widget!
I now prepared a small Java app Toggle GPS you can call with the Activity Starter from App Inventor to toggle GPS. I tested successfully with a HTC Desire running Android 2.2 and a HTC Desire S running Android 2.3.5. It did not work (as expected) on Samsung Galaxy Tab running Android 3.2.
Thank you Ben H for the example code.

Toggle GPS doesn't need any permissions. You also can call Toggle GPS directly (without App Inventor) and it will enable/disable the GPS. As already mentioned this will work on Android 2.x devices only.

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App Inventor blocks

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