Bound service crash with "Context.startForegroundService() did not then call Service.startForeground()" error

To expand on UdeshUk's answer - any use of MediaButtonReceiver (either building pending intents or just receiving media button intents) can result in your service being called with startForegroundService, because MediaButtonReceiver.onReceive starts your service in that way on Oreo. I haven't seen this documented anywhere.

I found the problem. In my notification I have set

setDeleteIntent(MediaButtonReceiver.buildMediaButtonPendingIntent(service, PlaybackStateCompat.ACTION_STOP))

So when user removes the notification it calls startForegroundService() because I called stopForeground() previously when pausing.

To overcome, I used a custom pending intent and handled it in the onStartCommand() instead of MediaButtonReveiver's PendingIntent

You must call this method inside your Service class onCreate() method:->

private void startServiceOreoCondition(){
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 26) {


            String CHANNEL_ID = "my_service";
            String CHANNEL_NAME = "My Background Service";

            NotificationChannel channel = new NotificationChannel(CHANNEL_ID,
                    CHANNEL_NAME,NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_NONE);
            ((NotificationManager) getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE)).createNotificationChannel(channel);

            Notification notification = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this, CHANNEL_ID)
                    .setCategory(Notification.CATEGORY_SERVICE).setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_tgc_icon).setPriority(PRIORITY_MIN).build();

            startForeground(101, notification);
        }
    }