Develop Reference

Prevent Android 13 from showing the notification permission prompt

Android 13 automatically asks the user if they would like to allow the app to send them notifications.
My app does not show any notifications, therefore it doesn't make any sense to ask the user for push notifications at this time. I would like to defer this prompt for when we actually have notifications and a well defined permissions UX.
How do you tell Android 13 to not ask for the permission automatically?

My app does not show any notifications
Something — perhaps a library — is doing something related to notifications, such as setting up a notifications channel. That will trigger the notification permission prompt.
IOW, the existence of that prompt means that something is working with notifications. You can tell this by creating a scrap "Hello, world!" project in your IDE, running it on your Android 13 device, and noticing that the notification permission prompt does not appear.
How do you tell Android 13 to not ask for the permission automatically?
Remove the code that is working with notifications. For example, you might check your app's page in Settings and see if any notification channels are set up, and see if their names help you identify what code is creating those channels.

Try to upgrade targetSdk and compileSdk to 33
If your notification feature is optional for users, you could migrate apps to Android 13 to control the timing of requesting Notification runtime permission by yourself. (System won't auto ask for notification permission on android 13 devices)

Xiaomi Android devices - properly requesting permissions for background locations

We develop an application which requires several permissions in order to get the user’s location while in the background.
We are having problems requesting the required permissions on Xiaomi devices. It seems that in addition to location permission and white listing the app from battery optimizations, two additional steps are required, specific to Xiaomi devices:
Disabling battery saver:
Enabling auto-start:
The problem is we found no way of automatically requesting permission from the user, and the only way we found is having the user manually go to these screens and change the settings.
We did find shortcuts to take us “half way”.
Going to power settings:
Intent intent = new
Intent("miui.intent.action.POWER_HIDE_MODE_APP_LIST").addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_DEFAULT);
Going to auto start settings:
Intent intent = new
Intent("miui.intent.action.OP_AUTO_START").addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_DEFAULT);
But multiple non intuitive actions are still required from the user.
Our aim:
We would very much like to make the process easier for the user. Optimally, to have a system dialog appear which asks the user for the permissions, instead of having him manually change the settings, much like the whitelisting of normal Android devices:
Is it possible using a Xiaomi specific SDK extension?
If (1) is not possible, at the very least we need a way to know if the user changes these settings or not. Currently we don’t know and cannot inform the user if the application works properly or not!

Android Do not Disturb (DnD) permission in managed profile

I have the following problem:
My app is distributed over an MDM system and runs in Android for Work.
In certain situation, the app must temporarily terminate the DnD mode. To achieve this, the user must grant the DnD permission when the app is started.
So far so good. If I install the app in the unmanaged area, the app shows up in the list and the permission can be granted without any problems.
As soon as the app is distributed via an MDM system, the app no longer appears in the list and the permission cannot be granted. All authorizations have been granted in the MDM system. As an example, I have distributed the Google App over the MDM system. This app appears in the list.
In the Manifest I have set the following permission:
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NOTIFICATION_POLICY" />
When the app is started, the following code is executed:
NotificationManager nm = (NotificationManager).getApplicationContext().getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE);
if(android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.M && !nm.isNotificationPolicyAccessGranted()) {
Intent intent = new
Intent(Settings.ACTION_NOTIFICATION_POLICY_ACCESS_SETTINGS);
startActivity(intent);
}
The problem only occurs with DnD permission. All other permissions such as overlay permission, are displayed without problems.
I hope anyone can help me.

According to Android documentation: NOT POSSIBLE
Users can grant and deny access to Do Not Disturb configuration from here. Managed profiles cannot grant Do Not Disturb access.

I haven't found a proper solution for the problem yet but I found a workaround to display the app in the work area. It seems that the app is only displayed in the dialog if the same app is also installed in the private area.
If the app is not installed in the private area, it will also not appear in the work area.
My workaround was to install the app in the private and work area. After the permission in the work area was granted, I removed the app from the private area. Like I said, it's not a solution to the problem itself, but it worked.
To me this looks like a bug in Android, because for all other permissions the app appears in the list

Apparently there is issure reported regarding this on Google Issue Tracker
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/77939714
This is the reply from Google:
Status: Won't Fix (Intended Behavior) 11:41AM You can not change DND
settings from a managed profile app. We will be updating the
documentation to clarify this.
There is also a reply stating:
Microsoft Intune has released their fully managed Android Enterprise
profile setup for Android Devices. ... and it can now access and
grant the DnD permission. Not sure if its the fact that we have gone
to fully managed devices or if something else has changed.
And I would believe this is actually because the device is fully managed.
So according to my understadning there are two options:
Fully managed device (will require a factory reset on the phone)
Install it on the personal profile

We have the same issue with the app SignOnSite. Can't get access to the DnD function for emergency evacuations unless we also install the app in the Personal space as well. Makes it to risky doing it this way, so ended up just installing the app in the Personal space.
Using Intune for our MDM.

Try this -
Intent intent = new Intent("android.settings.NOTIFICATION_POLICY_ACCESS_SETTINGS");
startActivity(intent);

What's "AutomaticZenRule" ? What is it used for?

Background
I just noticed some functions of NotificationManager that handle a class that's called AutomaticZenRule :
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/NotificationManager.html#addAutomaticZenRule(android.app.AutomaticZenRule)
and others...
The problem
Looking at the docs of AutomaticZenRule, it still doesn't tell much about what it is, and what can it be used for:
Rule instance information for zen mode.
What I tried
Searching the Internet, I can see just in a Commonsware blog post, that they wonder what it is:
It is unclear what AutomaticZenRule is ...
There is practically nothing more that I've found about it. Not "zen mode" and not "AutomaticZenRule".
The questions
What is "zen mode" ?
What is "AutomaticZenRule" , and what can I do with it? How is it related to notifications?
Is there anything special on Android N, that this API was added on this version?
Is there a sample for using it?

Zen Mode is just another name for Do Not Disturb (DND) mode. Android can activate DND mode based on rules. These rules can be provided either by the system, or by a third-party app.
In the following screenshot you can see two system-provided rules, together with a "Driving" rule provided by the third-party app "Pixel Ambient Services":
AutomaticZenRule is there to integrate your own rules into the Android system. To integrate your own rules, you have to follow these rough steps:
Make sure that you have sufficient permissions to access the DND policy (android.permission.ACCESS_NOTIFICATION_POLICY). See NotificationManager.isNotificationPolicyAccessGranted() for details.
Add an activity for your rule:
<activity android:name="MyRuleConfigurationActivity">
<meta-data android:name="android.service.zen.automatic.ruleType" android:value="My Rule" />
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.app.action.AUTOMATIC_ZEN_RULE"/>
</intent-filter>
</activity>
Android will show your activity whenever the user wants to create or edit a rule of the specified rule type. In the latter case, Android will supply the ID of the existing rule in NotificationManager#EXTRA_AUTOMATIC_RULE_ID. To propagate changes in your activity back to android, you need to construct an AutomaticZenRuleinstance and call NotificationManager.addAutomaticZenRule / updateAutomaticZenRule.
After that, you can tell Android that the conditions for your rule are currently satisfied / not satisfied by calling NotificationManager.setAutomaticZenRuleState.

From digging in into the other documents available, i was able to understand ZenMode to some extent(although it can be my own version and not the correct one).
What my understanding is as follows -
Zen Mode is the Do not Disturb mode which now in latest updates can be enabled automatically which depends on factors such as late time of the day, etc. AutomaticZenrule can be used by applications who want their notifications to not be masked or suppressed when in do not disturb mode.
For this your application should make request to policy access by sending the user to the activity that matches the system intent action ACTION_NOTIFICATION_POLICY_ACCESS_SETTINGS.
If user has granted access to notification policy for your app, then you will be able to set a priority notification even in do not disturb mode. AutomaticZenrule thus plays a vital role to state the system that the application's notifications not be suppressed.
Although, i dont have a running sample code for it, i guess it should be on similar lines like the enabling device admin code or requesting a permission use case.
Thanks to you i got to read something new :)

PhoneStateListener onMessageWaitingIndicatorChanged() not being called reliably

I have some code that detects when there is new voicemail. It's based on a PhoneStateListener.onMessageWaitingIndicatorChanged() implementation (so technically it fires only when the MWI indicator changes, not necessarily for every new voicemail).
It has been working perfectly for many months until 4.x.x updates to the devices.
Now, this works when the device is rebooted, otherwise its very unreliable. I can see the voicemail icon appear in the notification bar, but the debug logs in onMWIChanged stay silent.
I know that with 4.x.x there is a voicemail provider API. Thinking that this may have a connection, I added the android.intent.action.NEW_VOICEMAIL and android.intent.action.PROVIDER_CHANGED intents to my receiver, but they don't fire (in my BroadcastReceiver onReceive) either (my app's minSdkVersion is 8).

This is a post from Android Developers about the Android 4.0 APIs.
http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.0.html
If you scroll down there is a section about Voicemail Providers where it explains:
Because the APIs currently do not allow third-party apps to read all the voicemails from the system, the only third-party apps that should use the voicemail APIs are those that have voicemail to deliver to the user.
However, I assume if you are trying to receive voicemails from a third party and not from your service then this still may be possible. Check out this link about VoicemailContracts where I believe it says you need the permission ADD_VOICEMAIL in your manifest to use the actions you are using above.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/VoicemailContract.html
There are also samples that I did not get a chance to look at called Voicemail Provider Demo in your SDK. I hope this helps.

It does require the READ_PHONE_STATE permission. Although, if it worked before you must of had it set.
See LISTEN_MESSAGE_WAITING_INDICATOR.