Android Tutorial

Getting Started with Android & Android Studio Kotlin Basics for Android Project Structure & Gradle Activities & the Lifecycle Intents & Navigation Layouts & Views (XML) RecyclerView & Lists Fragments Jetpack Compose Basics ViewModel & State Management Room Database (Local Storage) Networking with Retrofit Coroutines & Asynchronous Work Dependency Injection with Hilt Permissions & Runtime Requests Building & Publishing to the Play Store

Permissions & Runtime Requests

June 02, 2026 • 1 min read

Sensitive features (camera, location, contacts) need the user's permission at runtime, not just in the manifest.

Declare in the manifest

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CAMERA"/>

Ask at runtime

val launcher = registerForActivityResult(
    ActivityResultContracts.RequestPermission()
) { granted ->
    if (granted) openCamera() else showRationale()
}

// trigger it
launcher.launch(Manifest.permission.CAMERA)

Good UX

  • Explain why you need a permission before asking.
  • Handle the "denied" case gracefully — never crash.
  • If permanently denied, guide the user to Settings.
Common mistake: Requesting many permissions on first launch scares users and hurts Play Store approval. Ask only when the feature is used.

Summary

Declare permissions in the manifest and request dangerous ones at runtime with a clear explanation and graceful fallbacks.