Google play security updates

[staskuban]

Google planning significant changes in its security policy from May 5th.

Hello! https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/10467955

Are you planning any plugin updates?

[ath0mas]

Why are you asking about this?

This plugin does not declare the All files access (MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE) permission.

cordova-plugin-media-capture/plugin.xml

Lines 79 to 83 in 0e2d9f6

	<config-file target="AndroidManifest.xml" parent="/*">
	<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECORD_AUDIO" />
	<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
	<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
	</config-file>

About permissions, #200 was merged recently to remove the unknown permission android.permission.RECORD_VIDEO, and on the way to remove all, see #211, as none is directly necessary for this plugin.

[mirko77]

@staskuban According to #210 there is a PR

@ath0mas starting with Android 11, requestLegacyExternalStorage will not work anymore so navigator.device.capture.captureVideo() would not work since it is storing the video in the public cache folder.

When using requestLegacyExternalStorage, Google detects that and from the 5th of May, developers need to justify why they need that flag.

Update your app to declare the All files access (MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE) permission in the manifest file, and complete the All files access permission declaration in Play Console from 5 May

[breautek]

Google is restricting usage of MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission, which is a permission added in API 30 to broadly manage files. Cordova does not declare or use this permission anywhere.

This is different from requestLegacyExternalStorage which was added in API 29, and can only be used on API 29. It simply makes the app behave as if it was on API 28 for filesystem related APIs. This flag is simply ignored on API 30.

Yes, there is work to be done for API 30 support so that this app uses the MediaStore APIs, and we can probably remove the WRITE_EXTERNAL_FLAG/READ_EXTERNAL_FLAG permissions, as those permissions are only for reading files that your app did not create when using the MediaStore APIs.

But Cordova is not affected by the MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE restriction because we simply don't use it.

Closing this issue as invalid.