Android Gallery on Android 4.4 (KitKat) returns different URI for Intent.ACTION_GET_CONTENT

Question

Before KitKat (or before the new Gallery) the Intent.ACTION_GET_CONTENT returned a URI like this

content://media/external/images/media/39

Answer 1

Had the same problem, tried the solution above but though it worked generally, for some reason I was getting permission denial on Uri content provider for some images although I had the android.permission.MANAGE_DOCUMENTS permission added properly.

Anyway found other solution which is to force opening image gallery instead of KITKAT documents view with :

// KITKAT

i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_PICK,android.provider.MediaStore.Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI);
    startActivityForResult(i, CHOOSE_IMAGE_REQUEST);

and then load the image:

Uri selectedImageURI = data.getData();
input = c.getContentResolver().openInputStream(selectedImageURI);
                BitmapFactory.decodeStream(input , null, opts);

EDIT

ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT might require you to persist permissions flags etc and generally often results in Security Exceptions...

Other solution is to use the ACTION_GET_CONTENT combined with c.getContentResolver().openInputStream(selectedImageURI) which will work both on pre-KK and KK. Kitkat will use new documents view then and this solution will work with all apps like Photos, Gallery, File Explorer, Dropbox, Google Drive etc...) but remember that when using this solution you have to create image in your onActivityResult() and store it on SD Card for example. Recreating this image from saved uri on next app launch would throw Security Exception on content resolver even when you add permission flags as described in Google API docs (that's what happened when I did some testing)

Additionally the Android Developer API Guidelines suggest:

ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT is not intended to be a replacement for ACTION_GET_CONTENT. The one you should use depends on the needs of your app:

Use ACTION_GET_CONTENT if you want your app to simply read/import data. With this approach, the app imports a copy of the data, such as an image file.

Use ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT if you want your app to have long term, persistent access to documents owned by a document provider. An example would be a photo-editing app that lets users edit images stored in a document provider.