Gboard responsible for all the ‘Launch Restricted’ notifications Android 12 Beta users received

Abner Li | Jul 17 2021 - 3:17 pm PT

While Android 12 stability is improving with every release, it’s still in beta, and some users last night received a reminder of that status via an absolute slew of system “Foreground Service BG-Launch Restricted” notifications that were generated by Gboard.

Some Android 12 Beta 3 users this morning woke up to several dozen or so system-level notifications titled Foreground Service BG-Launch Restricted. They came in quick succession over the course of evening hours. The “App restricted” — com.google.android.inputmethod.latin — is Gboard and was attempting to update stickers or another similar expressive form of media.

Apps that target Android 12 (API level 31) — which was released with Beta 3 this week — “can no longer start foreground services while running in the background, except for a few special cases.” The foreground action in Gboard’s case is likely a download.

If an app tries to start a foreground service while the app is running in the background, and the foreground service doesn’t satisfy one of the exceptional cases, the system throws a ForegroundServiceStartNotAllowedException.

It’s somewhat annoying to clear all these alerts, especially since you undoubtedly received other notifications over the course of the night to make “Clear all” not quite the right solution. That said, there’s no cause for concern from getting this prompt.

Quite a few Android 12 Beta users were affected by the problem with the last Gboard app update taking place earlier this week. It comes as some users are beginning to see the Material You “Dynamic Color” theme that sees the keyboard conform to your set wallpaper. There are also other small visual tweaks to the layout.