Android: get user ID without requiring scary (for user) permissions?

Question

In order to manage user preferences, at present I\'m grabbing the google user name (effectively the email address they\'ve registered to the device) and using (a hash of) that a

Answer 1

You can get the exact gmail email address using AccountPicker without requiring to add the permissions.

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.

Sample code from the source:

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);
        }
    }

Source of the above information is : This Answer on SO - to a similar but slightly different question asked in the past.

This Post - also has some nice approaches that would serve your purpose.