CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androiddeploymentgoogle-play-console
Francesco Meli
Francesco Meli

Reputation: 2700

REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES: Permission use is not directly related to your app's core purpose

Google Play Support keeps Rejecting the last deployment of my App.

Below I'm quoting the reason for the reject:

Issue found: Permission use is not directly related to your app's core purpose. We found that your app is not compliant with how REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES permission is allowed to be used. Specifically, the use of the permission is not directly related to the core purpose of the app.

Additionally, follow these steps to bring your app into compliance:

Please remove the use of REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES permission from your app.

After removing an unused package that was using the REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES permission, I tried to re-deploy but I've kept getting the app rejected.

I can confirm that the current list of used permissions does NOT include the REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES.

On play.google.com, I checked the permission lists of the last uploaded versions (see attached screenshot).

I also unpacked the lastly uploaded SDK file (using apktool), and searched "REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES" in the extracted folder; of course, no results were found.

Has anyone any suggestion on how to solve this issue?

enter image description here

Upvotes: 10

Views: 6412

Answers (2)

sat
sat

Reputation: 41076

  • First step, Check in your manifest merger file if the specified sensitive permission is shown. Check in release variant. (Most likely not, if yes, remove this permission)

  • Second step, In playstore, Go to app bundles explorer and check if any of the older app bundles have this permission and is still active. If yes. you have to provide an update to this track. It is unfortunate that Google play review email does not mention that issue can be in an older app bundles or other tracks

  • Provide an update to playstore.

Note, If you want to forcefully remove this permission (if you do not care which library is adding it)

   <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES" tools:node="remove"/>

If none of the above works. You have to write them an email and clarify.

Upvotes: 6

Preetam Pal
Preetam Pal

Reputation: 256

The same issue occurred with me. My app's previous versions included this permission but in the latest update, I removed them but still received rejection message via mail. Then I found that in the other track (internal testing track), I had an apk with REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES permission. This was the main cause of rejection of my app update. I observed that the form 'App bundles and APKs using sensitive permissions' was showing the internal track's apk information regarding the use of REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES.

So, I tried to deactivate my previous internal track's apk with the new version (that didn't include any REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGE permission). Now when I open my form page 'App bundles and APKs using sensitive permissions' again.

enter image description here

Now, it showed that no app bundle or apk uses this sensitive permission. Hope that it could solve this issue. I am too waiting for my update to be approved.

Upvotes: 13

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