What causes "illegal max wait time: " in microg/GmsCore?

Ensure the value is >= 0 before calling: clamp with Math.max(0, maxWaitTimeMillis).

microg/GmsCore · error · IllegalArgumentException

illegal max wait time:

Error message

illegal max wait time:

What it means

LocationRequest.setMaxWaitTime(long) throws IllegalArgumentException when maxWaitTimeMillis is negative. Max wait time caps how long location updates may be batched/delayed for delivery, so a negative cap is invalid and rejected before assignment. Notably this setter is also invoked during deserialization by readLocationRequest, so a negative value read from a serialized LocationRequest (e.g. via Bundle/intent extras) also throws.

Source

Thrown at play-services-location/src/main/java/com/google/android/gms/location/LocationRequest.java:458

    public LocationRequest setInterval(long intervalMillis) throws IllegalArgumentException {
        if (intervalMillis < 0) throw new IllegalArgumentException("intervalMillis must be greater than or equal to 0");
        if (this.minUpdateIntervalMillis == this.intervalMillis / 6) {
            this.minUpdateIntervalMillis = intervalMillis / 6;
        }
        if (this.maxUpdateAgeMillis == this.intervalMillis) {
            this.maxUpdateAgeMillis = intervalMillis;
        }
        this.intervalMillis = intervalMillis;
        return this;
    }

    /**
     * @deprecated Use {@link LocationRequest.Builder#setMaxUpdateDelayMillis(long)} instead. May be removed in a future release.
     */
    @Deprecated
    @NonNull
    public LocationRequest setMaxWaitTime(long maxWaitTimeMillis) throws IllegalArgumentException {
        if (maxWaitTimeMillis < 0) throw new IllegalArgumentException("illegal max wait time: " + maxWaitTimeMillis);
        maxUpdateDelayMillis = maxWaitTimeMillis;
        return this;
    }

    /**
     * @deprecated Use {@link LocationRequest.Builder#setMaxUpdates(int)} instead. May be removed in a future release.
     */
    @Deprecated
    @NonNull
    public LocationRequest setNumUpdates(int maxUpdates) throws IllegalArgumentException {
        if (maxUpdates <= 0) throw new IllegalArgumentException("invalid numUpdates: " + maxUpdates);
        this.maxUpdates = maxUpdates;
        return this;
    }

    /**
     * @deprecated Use {@link LocationRequest.Builder#setPriority(int)} instead. May be removed in a future release.
     */

View on GitHub (pinned to 157c9d86ac)

Solutions

Ensure the value is >= 0 before calling: clamp with Math.max(0, maxWaitTimeMillis).
Audit code that persists LocationRequest parameters (Bundles/intents) for negative sentinel values.
Switch to LocationRequest.Builder.setMaxUpdateDelayMillis() for batched updates.

Example fix

// before
request.setMaxWaitTime(maxWaitTimeMillis); // throws if negative
// after
if (maxWaitTimeMillis >= 0) {
    request.setMaxWaitTime(maxWaitTimeMillis);
} else {
    request.setMaxWaitTime(0);
}

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// Java
public static long sanitizeMaxWaitTime(long maxWaitTimeMillis) {
    return Math.max(0L, maxWaitTimeMillis);
}
// request.setMaxWaitTime(sanitizeMaxWaitTime(raw));

Type guard

static boolean isValidMaxWaitTime(long millis) { return millis >= 0; }

Try / catch

// Java
try {
    request.setMaxWaitTime(maxWaitTimeMillis);
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
    Log.w("LocationReq", "Invalid maxWaitTime " + maxWaitTimeMillis + ", using 0", e);
    request.setMaxWaitTime(0);
}

Prevention

Audit any code that stores LocationRequest parameters in Bundles/intents for negative sentinel values that later throw via readLocationRequest.
Clamp persisted values when reading them back before re-applying them.
Use Builder.setMaxUpdateDelayMillis for batching instead of the deprecated setter.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling the deprecated setMaxWaitTime() with a negative long; or readLocationRequest deserializing a stored request whose maxWaitTimeMillis was persisted as negative.

Common situations: Sentinel -1 defaults persisted into Bundles and later read back; arithmetic on wait time going negative; hand-crafted serialized requests passed via PendingIntent/intent extras.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Must be a positive integer", "Invalid value", "Unsupported": the invalid-argument-value error family, when a library rejects the value you pass — this error's family across 35 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of microg/GmsCore@157c9d86ac (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b0ee546dab4ffc8e. Report an issue: GitHub.