Developer Guidelines

The following guidelines will help you to build high quality applications with the Nearby Messages API and the Nearby Connections API.

Respect user privacy

  • Help the user understand what data your app will expose to nearby users.

  • Don't publish sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers. Instead, pass authorization tokens or transaction identifiers.

Require an explicit user-initiated action to start Nearby

  • Don’t surprise the user. Require the user to perform an explicit action (a button tap, going to a section in your app, a special switch, etc) to activate Nearby.

  • On both iOS and Android, calling Nearby for the first time will trigger a permission dialog from Nearby. Waiting for an explicit user action before invoking Nearby will help the user contextualize the dialog and associate it with your app's proximity-based feature.

Be mindful of battery consumption

Nearby's use of radios and sensors will cause your app to consume battery at 2.5-3.5 times the normal rate. To reduce battery usage, observe the following recommendations.

Use the right branding

  • We’ve provided a set of standard assets that you can use to represent Nearby in your app. Use only the following approved icons when referring to Nearby.

  • PNG Assets

  • SVG Assets