Android 6 Marshmallow: requests for some specific permissions are instantly denied with no ui shown

Question

Using official AVD rev. 3

Calling this:

ActivityCompat.requestPermissions(activity, new String[]{"android.permission.USE_CREDENTIALS"}, REQUEST_PERMISSION_CREDENTIALS);

Fires immediately:

onRequestPermissionsResult (int requestCode, String[] permissions, int[] grantResults)

And resulting code is PackageManager.PERMISSION_DENIED

Anyone has a fix?

UPDATE: Known to be affected:

Manifest.permission.CHANGE_NETWORK_STATE
Manifest.permission.WRITE_SETTINGS (solved, see Sam's answer)
android.permission.USE_CREDENTIALS (solved, read Update 2)
READ_SMS

UPDATE 2: See excellent accepted answer. Essentially, USE_CREDENTIALS is a safe permission now. Beats me why sdk not simply return PERMISSION_GRANTED for it...

Answer 1

Refer to these pages: permissions by protection level and protection level definitions.

Manifest.permission.CHANGE_NETWORK_STATE

Manifest.permission.WRITE_SETTINGS

These fall under the protection level "signature|appop|pre23|preinstalled" which means that only same-signature apps (system signed basically), app operators, apps that target below API level 23 and presintalled apps can have these.

android.permission.USE_CREDENTIALS

This is only needed on API level 22 and below. See this.

Also you should check out the Behavior Changes.

Answer 2

Regarding WRITE_SETTINGS, CommonsGuy has provided a workaround here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/32083622/238753