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I need to let the user take a picture (from the gallery or from a camera app) with Android 6.0.

Because I don't need to control the camera, I wanted to use an intent as describe here:

However, if you don't need such control, you can just use an ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE intent to request an image. When you start the intent, the user is prompted to choose a camera app (if there isn't already a default camera app), and that app takes the picture. The camera app returns the picture to your app's onActivityResult() method.

https://developer.android.com/preview/features/runtime-permissions.html

But for this ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE, you need to fill the extra "MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT" which is an Uri to a temp file (without this param I will have only a thumbnail). This temp file must be into the external storage (to be accessible by the camera app). You need the permission WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE to create a file on the external storage.

So it's not possible to capture an image through native dialogs/apps without the permission android.permission.CAMERA or android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE. Is that correct?

Thanks

Michele Lacorte
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stankocken
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  • You are welcome to try passing a `content://` `Uri` in `EXTRA_OUTPUT` pointing to a `ContentProvider` that you write, where you can accept the data. I have not tried this, and my guess is that there will be a bunch of camera apps that will not be expecting such a value and will choke on it. – CommonsWare Sep 08 '15 at 16:24
  • did you ever find a work around for this? – AndroidEnthusiast Jan 22 '16 at 11:34

4 Answers4

12

Try this:

Intent cameraIntent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
File file = new File(getActivity().getApplicationContext().getExternalFilesDir(android.os.Environment.DIRECTORY_PICTURES).getAbsolutePath() + File.separator + "yourPicture.jpg");
Uri uri = Uri.fromFile(file);
cameraIntent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, url);

This gives you access to an "external" storage writable for camera apps in this case, but the files are just visible from your app. To learn a little bit more about storage spaces in android see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C28pvd2plBA

Hope it helps you!

Jonathan Aste
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    This is the only working solution I found so far that doesn't break on Android 6. :) – Andrea Lazzarotto Aug 09 '16 at 21:19
  • Working! No need for WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE or READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE. – Makalele Jan 19 '17 at 14:26
  • Thanks! In `onActivityResult` you will get `RESULT_OK` and `data == null`. In this case you should either read a file from path (variable `uri`), or see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32043222/how-to-get-full-size-picture-and-thumbnail-from-camera-in-the-same-intent. You have to get permission for file reading on API >= 23. – CoolMind Feb 12 '18 at 11:17
6

It is possible if you on android 4.4+, you can specify MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, to be a file under your package-specific directories

Starting in Android 4.4, the owner, group and modes of files on external storage devices are now synthesized based on directory structure. This enables apps to manage their package-specific directories on external storage without requiring they hold the broad WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. For example, the app with package name com.example.foo can now freely access Android/data/com.example.foo/ on external storage devices with no permissions. These synthesized permissions are accomplished by wrapping raw storage devices in a FUSE daemon.

https://source.android.com/devices/storage/

Derek Fung
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2

This is possible without either of the CAMERA and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permissions.

You can create a temporary in your app's cache directory, and give other apps access to it. That makes the file writeable by the camera app:

File tempFile = File.createTempFile("photo", ".jpg", context.getCacheDir());
tempFile.setWritable(true, false);

Now you just need to pass this file as the output file for the camera intent:

Intent intent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, Uri.fromFile(mTempFile));  // pass temp file
startActivityForResult(intent, REQUEST_CODE_CAMERA);

Note: the file Uri won't be passed to you in the Activity result, you'll have to keep a reference to the tempFile and retrieve it from there.

Phazor
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1

I used content:// with FileProvider.getUriForFile() as described here, and used external camera app by ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE intent, which is not supposed to require any permission.

But, it seems that if the app's manifest uses the android.permission.CAMERA permission, then opening an external camera app does require camera permission. See here and here.

Haim
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