Ran into the GPS In-App Purchases issue for UE 5.0. The com.android.vending.BILLING permission is what was apparently causes the GPS issue. It is inserted into AndroidManifest.xml file by default.
The following solved the issue for my C++ based Neuraptobot game which doesn’t use ads, subscriptions or in-app purchases:
- UE5 has two plugins that are enabled by default that need to be disabled or the build Android process will automatically insert the permission: AndroidPlayBilling and OnlineSubsystemGooglePlay.
- Modify accordingly: Remove Unwanted Android Manifest Permissions.
Notes:
The com.android.vending.BILLING permission is inserted by default even if the two plugins are disabled thus step 2 was required. Step 2 actually removes it from the Intermediate\Android\arm64\AndroidManifest.xml which is what I did first. The enabled plugins, however, were causing it to be re-inserted into the aab bundle AndroidManifest.xml even though it wasn’t in the Intermediate build AndroidManifest.xml.
Not sure why all this stuff is enabled by default given that there is an ‘Advanced APK Packaging’ subsection in ‘Project Settings’ to add permissions. If a certain Feature is desired, a simple tutorial to add permissions and/or enable the necessary plugins would seemingly be a better approach but I digress.