StartApp needs 29 permissions, why so much?

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1

I use StartApp in all of my apps and I’m very happy with them.
But, I’m getting many negative reviews(beside false virus detection of course) about number of permissions.
StartApp for full integration requires 29, Yes that’s correct number of perms.
Is it really necessary to use all of them???

2

I was about to post same question.

3

I believe some of them are optional but i am unsure which ones.

4

An official reply from startapp will be helpful on this

5

Hi All,

Like others mentioned here, several of those are optional and many of them are device specific permissions, which are only shown once.

So, for example, we have this one - com.android.launcher.permission.READ_SETTINGS and following this one there are several of the same permission, only device specific (motorola, HTC, LG…).

At the end, only one will appear in the store.

So although the complete list is 29, if you go full integration the list will be 12 and on partial it will be 8.

Remember that a good number of these permissions are very standard and it is likely you already have 4-5 of them in your app, so the addition is not much.

Hope this answered your questions.

Let me know if more info is needed here.

Ariel.

6

I had a dozen or so permissions on most of my apps (galleries+webview with set as wallpaper & share option), combined with startapp it climbed to 37 (and that number is shown on google play, even though some are device specific)…
I believe I’ve seen names of some device-specific permissions swoosh by in eclipses’ logcat when I tested an app with another networks’ SDK in emulator (not 100% sure, but if it is so, there is a way to hide the additional device-specific lines of code (under sdk.jar) and make the app less suspicious to the end user).

In theory, if we skipped some of those device specific lines (for motorola/htc/lg) what would happen? completely incompatible with all motorolas etc, or only some quirky models?

7

I wonder this too, Startapp uses so much permission just for shortcut create. Airpush have the same feature but only use ONE permission:

<uses-permission android:name=“com.android.launcher.permission.INSTALL_SHORTCUT” />

8

Hi All,

Thanks for the feedback, I’m sending this thread to our tech team to review and see if there’s room to minimize the permission list.

Ariel.

9

We must use all of this or only add permission install shortcut like in Airpush?

10

Because you need extra device specific permissions for some phones when installing shortcuts.

Also, StartApp includes a Bookmark and Homepage. It’s not just an icon drop.