ADB unable to start IMAGE_CAPTURE intent activity on Android 11

Question

The following ADB command is not working on Android 11 devices

adb -d shell "am start -a android.media.action.IMAGE_CAPTURE" -W

Results in

Starting: Intent { act=android.media.action.IMAGE_CAPTURE }
Error: Activity not started, unknown error code 102

It seems to be related to the changes in Android 11, see Android 11 (R) return empty list when querying intent for ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE and the solution mentioned here is to add this to manifest

<queries>
    <intent>
        <action android:name="android.media.action.IMAGE_CAPTURE" />
    </intent>
</queries>

Is there any equivalent for this in ADB?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 04 '21 at 11:50

This appears to be a bug in Android. The camera activity launch doesn't fail due to the issue you linked to but because of denial from the AppOpsManager service:

05-04 14:16:51.789   620  2669 W ActivityTaskManager: Appop Denial: starting Intent { act=android.media.action.IMAGE_CAPTURE flg=0x10000000 cmp=com.android.camera2/com.android.camera.CaptureActivity } from null (pid=4079, uid=2000) requires android:camera

This can be verified via

adb shell appops get com.android.shell

where com.android.shell is the package name supplied by the command-line utilities such as am i.e. the Android Shell package. This yields

Uid mode: COARSE_LOCATION: foreground
LEGACY_STORAGE: ignore
CAMERA: allow; rejectTime=+4m37s345ms ago

which shows how long back the rejection for the CAMERA op was incurred by Shell package.

But this policy of rejection is incorrect since com.android.shell already has the CAMERA permission which can be verified via

adb shell dumpsys package com.android.shell|grep 'android.permission.CAMERA'
  android.permission.CAMERA
    android.permission.CAMERA: granted=true, flags=[ SYSTEM_FIXED|GRANTED_BY_DEFAULT]

One alternative (that might not work for all) is to start this intent from a root shell (after adb root/su) which works.

05-04 14:17:23.610   502  2518 I CameraService: CameraService::connect call (PID -1 "com.android.camera2", camera ID 0) for HAL version default and Camera API version 2

Thanks. Bug report: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/187110857 — Prerak Mann, May 06 '21 at 14:31
@PrerakMann You can add your phone details as well in the bug to add to the importance of the bug since currently, it lists only an emulator as the platform where the issue is observed. — Zoso, May 06 '21 at 15:27

ADB unable to start IMAGE_CAPTURE intent activity on Android 11

1 Answers1