How to Make Android Camera Permission Optional

I have an Android app called To Read. To Read allows you to search for books and add them to a reading list. This weekend I added the ability to add a book by scanning a barcode.

When I uploaded the finished app to the developer console, this is what I saw.

336 different Android devices can no longer see or install my app from the Play Store?! Since the camera is not required to use the basic functionality of the app, I wanted to make the permission optional. Here’s what I did…

Modify AndroidManifest.xml

In order for an app to use the camera, it must request the android.permission.CAMERA permission in the AndroidManifest.xml file. Adding this line (and this line only) will allow the app to use the camera without any problems. However, if you only add this line, devices that do not have a camera will not be able to install the app. This is a huge problem if the app does not necessarily need the camera for core operation (like mine).

There are a couple more things you need to add to the manifest so that the camera is not required to install the app:

<!-- First, request the camera permission -->
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CAMERA" />

<!--
  -- IMPORTANT PART:
  -- Include all the "features" under the camera permission,
  -- and mark them all as optional.
  -->
<uses-feature
    android:name="android.hardware.camera"
    android:required="false" />
<uses-feature
    android:name="android.hardware.camera.autofocus"
    android:required="false" />

If you want to make the permission optional, you need to add the <uses-feature> tag for each of the features under the CAMERA permission. Within this tag, make sure to specify android:required="false" for each feature. I found the child features of the CAMERA permission on this page (image below).

Now that the use of the camera is optional, the other thing that needs to be done is check at runtime whether or not the device has a camera. You can use the following snippet of code to do that.

// Check that the device will let you use the camera
PackageManager pm = getPackageManager();

if (pm.hasSystemFeature(PackageManager.FEATURE_CAMERA)) {
    // Do camera stuff...
}

I hope you found this info useful. It took me longer than I would have liked to figure this one out on my own.

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