Broadcast Receiver Not Working After Device Reboot in Android

Here’s a tested and working solution on both the devices that you mentioned, OnePlus and Mi.

As you said the auto-start prevention feature on OnePlus and Mi devices prevent apps from starting up their services automatically on boot complete so as to improve the overall device boot speed and battery performance. However, there’s a workaround to get your app working even when this feature is turned on.

I have noticed that if you have an AccessibilityService in your app and it is turned on by the user, then your app passes the filter that these manufacturers apply and the app receives it’s boot complete event and any other BroadcastReceiver works as expected.

The possible explanation of this trick can be that since AccessibilityService is a system level service, so by registering your own service you are passing the certain filter applied by these manufacturers and as soon as your custom AccessibilityService gets triggered by the OS, your app becomes active in receiving the eligible BroadcastReceiver that you had registered.

So, here’s how to do it,

Start by adding this permission to your AndroidManifest.xml,

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BIND_ACCESSIBILITY_SERVICE"/>

This will allow you to register your app’s AccessibilityService with the system.

Now, add a very basic configuration for your AccessibilityService by creating a file for example my_accessibility_service.xml inside XML folder under your res folder in your project.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<accessibility-service
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:accessibilityFeedbackType="feedbackSpoken"
    android:description="@string/service_desc"
    android:notificationTimeout="100"/>

There’s just one more step left to do, define your custom AccessibilityService in your project,

public class MyAccessibilityService extends AccessibilityService {

    @Override
    public void onAccessibilityEvent(AccessibilityEvent event) { }

    @Override
    public void onInterrupt() {

    }
}

Note, since you’re not needing the AccessibilityService for any purpose rather than this workaround, you can leave the overridden methods empty.

Finally, just declare your AccessibilityService in your AndroidManifest.xml,

<service
    android:name=".MyAccessibilityService"
    android:label="@string/app_name"
    android:permission="android.permission.BIND_ACCESSIBILITY_SERVICE">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.accessibilityservice.AccessibilityService"/>
    </intent-filter>

    <meta-data
        android:name="android.accessibilityservice"
        android:resource="@xml/my_accessibility_service"/>
</service>

That’s all. Now within your app, just ask your users to turn on the accessibility service for your app from the settings and leave it on and voila! Your app works fine on all devices even where the OS puts a filter on which apps should auto-start on boot.

EDIT 1

Here’s how you can check if accessibility service is turned ON or not for your app,

private static final int ACCESSIBILITY_ENABLED = 1;

public static boolean isAccessibilitySettingsOn(Context context) {
    int accessibilityEnabled = 0;
    final String service = context.getPackageName() + "https://stackoverflow.com/" + MyAccessibilityService.class.getCanonicalName();
    try {
        accessibilityEnabled = Settings.Secure.getInt(
                context.getApplicationContext().getContentResolver(),
                android.provider.Settings.Secure.ACCESSIBILITY_ENABLED);
    } catch (Settings.SettingNotFoundException e) {
        Log.e("AU", "Error finding setting, default accessibility to not found: "
                + e.getMessage());
    }
    TextUtils.SimpleStringSplitter mStringColonSplitter = new TextUtils.SimpleStringSplitter(':');

    if (accessibilityEnabled == ACCESSIBILITY_ENABLED) {
        String settingValue = Settings.Secure.getString(
                context.getApplicationContext().getContentResolver(),
                Settings.Secure.ENABLED_ACCESSIBILITY_SERVICES);
        if (settingValue != null) {
            mStringColonSplitter.setString(settingValue);
            while (mStringColonSplitter.hasNext()) {
                String accessibilityService = mStringColonSplitter.next();

                if (accessibilityService.equalsIgnoreCase(service)) {
                    return true;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    return false;
}

Hope this helps.