react-native-background-call

If you’re making video calls (with services like LiveKit), you probably need to keep calls running in the background.

For iOS, there’s a wonderful library called react-native-callkeep.

In theory, it should also work on Android, but for some reason, it doesn’t. There are other libraries like Notifee, but they didn’t work for me either.

That’s why this library is currently Android-only (though that might change soon).

Installation

npm install --save react-native-background-call
# or
yarn add react-native-background-call

# If you are using Expo prebuild
run:npx expo prebuild --clean

Usage

There are only two functions: startForegroundService() and stopForegroundService(). You need to call startForegroundService() when your call begins — it will keep the call active in the background. Then, call stopForegroundService() when your call finishes.

You can do this using useEffect, or any other approach that suits you better.

Note: You should call startForegroundService() only after the user has granted microphone access; otherwise, the function won’t do anything. If the user grants camera permission later, you’ll need to call startForegroundService() again.

import BackgroundCall from "react-native-background-call";

useEffect(() => {
  BackgroundCall.startForegroundService({
    title: "Video Call",
    message: "Call in progress",
  });

  return () => {
    BackgroundCall.stopForegroundService();
  };
}, []);

That's it.