Android Usage Access for Android 5 Samsung devices

Question

As you might know, since Android 5 was launched, accessing the recent tasks (usage stats) of your device requires the user to enable this feature manually (Settings->Security->Usage Access).

My app checks if the device uses Android 5, and if so, then it offers the user the possibility of opening the settings screen for enabling usage access:

Intent intent = new Intent(Settings.ACTION_USAGE_ACCESS_SETTINGS);
                    startActivityForResult(intent, 12345);

The problem comes when I try to do this in a Samsung device running Android 5... I got this error when the line shown above is executed:

android.content.ActivityNotFoundException: No Activity found to handle Intent { act=android.settings.USAGE_ACCESS_SETTINGS }
            at android.app.Instrumentation.checkStartActivityResult(Instrumentation.java:1801)
            at android.app.Instrumentation.execStartActivity(Instrumentation.java:1499)
            at android.app.Activity.startActivityForResult(Activity.java:3913)

It seems that the Settings.ACTION_USAGE_ACCESS_SETTINGS action has not been implemented, which is weird because if you go to Settings the option to enable the app to access this usage stats is there...

Any idea of how to fix this problem for this specific case?

Answer 1

Sorry for the late reply, I hope you have found a good solution, but if not or for other people who have this problem,

this bug seems to exist in some Samsung models, to avoid the crash of your app, maybe you can check if your intent can be handled

PackageManager packageManager = getActivity().getPackageManager();

if (intent.resolveActivity(packageManager) != null) {
    startActivity(intent);
} else {
    Toast.makeText(getBaseContext(), "Please open settings, your model can't be forced 
                          to open it", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
}