How to debug/reset Android 6.0 permissions?

Question

While migrating one of my apps to use the Android 6.0 permissions system, I found it very hard to debug permissions using the emulator.

Findings:

• Disabling a permission in the app info screen doesn't re-show the grant permission dialog when using the requestPermissions() method.
• Reinstalling the app seems to be the only way to make the app show the grant permission dialog again.

What is the proper method to debug permission using the Android emulator?

Answer 1

It’s actually very easy to debug Android 6.0 permissions. You can reset the permissions to the "install state" for the current foreground app all apps using the following ADB shell command:

adb shell pm reset-permissions 

Note: Currently you can't reset the runtime permissions for a specific package, the package manger (pm) tool help section states:

revert all runtime permissions to their default state.

You can easily execute the reset-permissions command using the terminal interface in Android Studio. Note that ADB commands only works if the ADB directory is added to the PATH system environment variable (see: add ADB to path variable).

You can also reset/revoke a specific permissions using:

adb shell pm revoke com.your.package android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE 

A downside of this command is that it will restart your app, but this doesn't reset the runtime permissions for all apps. To grant a permission replace revoke with grant.