Everyplay requests many permissions on Android OS6+

Everyplay has added permissions to the startup sequence of my game on Android. These now ask the user during the game’s opening launch sequence which isn’t the greatest user flow.

1) android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE
What is requiring this permission to be in the manifest file? Whilst it’s only read-only access to the phone’s state Google classify it as a dangerous permission and under OS6+ it now causes a warning to pop-up for the user that says:
“Allow [Game Name] to make and manage phone calls”. Which obviously will cause a lot of users to be concerned. Are we able to remove this permission from our manifest file?

2) android.permission.RECORD_AUDIO
I assume this is for the Everyplay feature. It will now cause the popup - “Allow [Game Name] to record audio”. Are we able to not ask the user for this permission when the game is first run, and instead ask for it only when the user first presses on the Everyplay Video Share button?

3) android.permission.CAMERA
As above, can we delay asking the user for this until they press on the replay sharing button?

4) android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE + android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE
Both of these will give us the “Allow [Game Name] to acess photo, media and files on your device” popup. Do we need these permissions? I’m lead to believe that Starting in API level 19, this permission is not required to read/write files in application-specific directories returned by getExternalFilesDir(String) and getExternalCacheDir().

 

We have the similar issues, please fix them as at this stage your plugin requires 4 permissions in a row upon app launch which is unacceptable especially as I am not sure all of them are needed:
WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE - not needed since API 19, as app storage can be accessed using context methods
CAMERA - why is it required if there is no front camera recording functionality for Android?

 

Hi. Do you have any update on this issue?

 

I really like Everyplay, but the permissions requests are annoying.

 

Thank you for the response. It helped a lot.
I also want to mention that you need to add this permission manually on the Android Manifest:
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" android:maxSdkVersion="18" />

otherwise it will default to the read permissions without the maxSdkVersion.

 

We're currently in an uncomfortable situation with the permissions that are asked at app start on Android 6.x devices. Is there really no way for us to give the player context on why the runtime permissions are asked? For example moving the runtime permissions away from the app start by initializing later or something like that?

 

We disabled the camera permissions, everything seems to work fine after that, the facecam feature is understandably automatically disabled We also added the suggested android:maxSdkVersion="18" tag to the manifest and so far everything works and no annoying permissions are asked on Android 6.x devices.

 

Are there any updates on this?

As a user, i would never approve those permission during the first start of a game.

Also, there should be a short explanation dialogue:

"Do you like to add camera/microphone recordings to your Everyplay videos?"
Yes -> Request Permission dialogue open
No -> Facecam is disabled

Like this, the user can associate the permission to Everyplay.

 

Why the Everyplay SDK starts automatically? Can we start it manually so the permissions will be asked on the correct time.

 

@ullatussimo Is there a way for the app to request the permissions once the user actually presses a button to enable Everyplay in the game's options?
I can't stress enough how this is needed. There are a lot of paranoid android users, myself included.
Almost anyone with an android phone that tested my game was asking me "why am i requesting permissions on load" and why so many.
It's not something insignificant, especially when you may start getting bad reviews from people that were put off by Everyplay slapping you with 3 permissions right off the bat.

 

I also need the solution for this. My game was nominated to bed featured globally and we need to solve this issue before being featured. Google Play doesn't want the app to request many permission at launch.
Is it possible to request the permission at the first time we click to share the replay?

 

@LeGiangAnh As far as i know, not yet. It's also something i want because it was requested almost unanimously by the beta testers. That they shouldn't see the permissions if they don't ask for the feature.

 

@ullatussimo isn't everyplay facecam only supported on ios at the moment anyway?
That's what it says on one of the introduction to everyplay sites i think.

 

Even I disabled "Early Initializer", it still requested at launch. Then I followed @ullatussimo suggestion to temporary solve this.

 

@pmjo OhOh! something i found out today. Everyplay kept crashing on my tablet, so i thought that it was just because it's an old Tegra3, even though i'm checking if recording is supported before doing anything.
It didn't crash, rather it would lock the application except the audio if i would start everyplay.
Today i found out that it was an overlay app that caused the issue, called Twilight. It slowly turns the screen red the later at night it is.

 

@ullatussimo this issue was brought up almost one year ago, and "working on it but no ETA" usually means some progress after one year. It would be great to know if there has been any progress on the v2.0?

Is making the SDK open source an option here? So people can contribute to the project.

I know I wouldn't press that accept button and would become suspicious if a game I just installed asked for Audio/Video recording permissions the second I installed it.

I'm going to have to cut this feature from my game just because of that, and go to great lengths to offer and maintain a second version with the feature enabled.

 

Any updates on this? I've added Everyplay to my game and now it's asking for the "Manage phone calls" permissions which is a bit much for users who don't understand why.

 

Tried this and it removed 1 out of the 4 permissions - but still asking for "Manage and make phone calls" which I'm not sure why this would be the case.

 

I don't think that it is Everyplay. If i remember correctly it asks for camera, mic and photo gallery.

 

Very strange - I have the Unity cloud build and installed that one - and it only asks for 2 permissions, camera and audio recording. When I compile on my computer, it adds 2 more permissions including the "Manage phone calls". Not sure how this is happening but at least the Unity Cloud seems to work better for my build in that sense. Will stick with the Unity Cloud version of the builds and as long as it keeps up only 2 permissions, this will work.

 

It shouldn't though. Think you should file a bug report. A project should be the same no matter if you compile it to the cloud or on your pc as far as i know.

 

I'm getting the phone call warning, what is up with that? Why does Everyplay need to make phone calls? I would never allow an app to make phone calls on my behalf.

 

The phone call permission (READ_PHONE_STATE) is not needed by Everyplay! You can get rid of it by setting minSdkVersion of Everyplay plugin to some value bigger than 3 (source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions...-state-permission-although-its-not-declared-i).

 

Thanks for the clarification.