Getting Android owner's email address nicely
I want to allow the user to provide me their email address without typing it in. Ideally, there'd be a text field where the user could either type an email address or push a button to autofill it.
In an earlier question, Roman Nurik suggests using an AccountManager to handle this, but that requires my app to use the GET_ACCOUNTS privilege; my app could then access all of the user's accounts on the device, including their Facebook/Twitter accounts. That permission seems way too broad for what I want.
Is there a nicer way to handle this that doesn't require granting my app such a heavy duty permission?
Indeed, not only can't you do this without GET_ACCOUNTS, the information you want only exists in the user's (Google) account data.
On my Sprint phone, the 'owner' address sprint assigns is myusername@sprintpcs.com , and that can be seen using getprop from a shell. But that's not my primary email address, or even one I ever use/check. What you want is my gmail address, and that's stored in the Android account data.
Actually, you want one of the two — which is another reason you need GET_ACCOUNTS. If you're going to ask for my email address, you need to let me select among the two @gmail.com accounts I have configured on the device. I know which one is my 'preferred' one (although even that's contextual), but AFAIK neither is considered by the system to be more 'primary' or 'default' than the other.
I know I'm way too late, but this might be useful to others.
I think the best way to auto-populate an email field now is by using AccountPicker
If your app has the GET_ACCOUNTS permission and there's only one account, you get it right away. If your app doesn't have it, or if there are more than one account, users get a prompt so they can authorize or not the action.
Your app needs to include the Google Play Services but it doesn't need any permissions.
This whole process will fail on older versions of Android (2.2+ is required), or if Google Play is not available so you should consider that case.
Here's a basic code sample:
private static final int REQUEST_CODE_EMAIL = 1;
private TextView email = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.email);
// ...
try {
Intent intent = AccountPicker.newChooseAccountIntent(null, null,
new String[] { GoogleAuthUtil.GOOGLE_ACCOUNT_TYPE }, false, null, null, null, null);
startActivityForResult(intent, REQUEST_CODE_EMAIL);
} catch (ActivityNotFoundException e) {
// TODO
}
// ...
@Override
protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
if (requestCode == REQUEST_CODE_EMAIL && resultCode == RESULT_OK) {
String accountName = data.getStringExtra(AccountManager.KEY_ACCOUNT_NAME);
email.setText(accountName);
}
}
An alternative approach might be to find the Google username associated with the device, from which you can reconstruct a user@gmail.com address, but that still requires use of the AccountManager. See Accessing Google Account Id /username via Android.