Question

Is there a way to tell if a certain Android permission is required by which Android APIs? For example, which APIs will require the GET_TASKS or REBOOT permissions? My app, inherited from someone who’s long gone, has these permissions listed in the manifest. I don’t think we are using them, but I’m also afraid that if I remove them, there will be bad consequences. Any ideas on how to deal with this?

Answer 1

Both of these permissions are quite specialized, and only have a few uses.

android.permission.REBOOT

First of all, this permission has a protection level of signatureOrSystem, so unless your application is part of a custom ROM or you have access to the signing keys for the platform you are installing it on, the application won’t even be granted the permission.]

It is required to call PowerManager.reboot()

android.permission.GET_TASKS

This permission is only marked dangerous, so your app can actually obtain this one.

There are two calls in ActivityManager that require this permission, getRecentTasks() and getRunningTasks() to get information about the current application tasks in the system. It’s often used by custom Launcher applications to populate task lists.

HTH