Contact Picker: Privacy-First Contact Sharing

Posted by Roxanna Aliabadi Walker, Senior Product ManagerPrivacy and user control remain at the heart of the Android experience. Just as the photo picker made media sharing secure and easy to implement, we are now bringing that same level of privacy, simplicity, and great user experience to contact selection.A New Standard for Contact PrivacyHistorically, applications requiring access to a specific user's contacts relied on the broad READ_CONTACTS permission. While functional, this approach often granted apps more data than necessary. The new Android Contact Picker, introduced in Android 17, changes this dynamic by providing a standardized, secure, and searchable interface for contact selection.This feature allows users to grant apps access only to the specific contacts they choose, aligning with Android's commitment to data transparency and minimized permission footprints.How It WorksDevelopers can integrate the Contact Picker using the Intent.ACTION_PICK_CONTACTS intent. This updated API offers several powerful capabilities:Granular Data Requests: Apps can specify exactly which fields they need, such as phone numbers or email addresses, rather than receiving the entire contact record.Multi-Selection Support: The picker supports both single and multiple contact selections, giving developers more flexibility for features like group invitations.Selection Limits: Developers can set custom limits on the number of contacts a user can select at one time.Temporary Access: Upon selection, the system returns a Session URI that provides temporary read access to the requested data, ensuring that access does not persist longer than necessary.Access to other profiles: When using this new intent, the interface will allow users to select contents from other user profiles such as a w...

Original source: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/contact-picker-privacy-first-contact.html
Publisher: Android Developers Blog