Nearby Notifications Overview

Nearby Notifications helps users to discover what's around them, by surfacing location-specific notifications for apps and websites, with no prior app install required. Using Nearby Notifications, you can:

  • Drive your own app installs.
  • Open personal or business profiles in social apps.
  • Launch conversations or chatbots inside messaging apps.
  • Drive consumers to content about nearby products.
  • Help users explore store inventory.
  • Drive checkins, reviews within local/travel apps.

As a developer, you can associate your app or website with a BLE beacon or BLE- capable smart device. Android users near that device or beacon will see the message in the Nearby section of Google Settings, the Nearby Quick Settings tile will light up on supported devices, and messages that perform well will be raised as notifications. Your message can either lead to the Play Store, a mobile website, or directly to your app if it's already installed. This functionality is built in to Google Play Services, so you don't need to change your app to start using it.

Nearby Notifications works with all types of Eddystone beacon, and also iBeacon.

There are two basic types of experiences that you can provide using Nearby Notifications:

  • Link to an HTTPS URL to provide a notification to the user, and open the URL in the browser when the user taps the notification.
  • Trigger an app intent to launch an app that is already installed and perform a specific action. If the app isn't installed, the user is taken to the Play Store where the app can be installed; the user can then continue to the feature specified by the developer.

Neither experience requires that an app is installed on the user's device.