[android] Android - java.lang.SecurityException: Permission Denial: starting Intent

I have a library (jar) on build path of my project. The project accesses the MainActivity in the jar, using the following intent:

final Intent it = new Intent();
it.setClassName("com.example.lib", "com.example.lib.MainActivity");
startActivity(it);

It used to work for sometime, but suddenly started getting 'ActivityNotFoundException: No Activity found to handle Intent' which I was able to resolve. But now I am stuck with a 'java.lang.SecurityException: Permission Denial: starting Intent'.

I have tried all suggestions made on stackoverflow (check for duplicates in manifest file; add android:exported="true" to lib manifest; Eclipse> Project> Clean; adding/ modifying 'intent-filter' tags; etc.). I even tried re-writing the manifest of the project but not going anywhere with it.

Here's the logcat output:

11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626): java.lang.SecurityException: Permission     Denial: starting Intent { cmp=com.example.lib/.MainActivity } from ProcessRecord{40dd3778     4626:com.example.project/u0a10046} (pid=4626, uid=10046) not exported from uid 10047
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.os.Parcel.readException(Parcel.java:1425)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.os.Parcel.readException(Parcel.java:1379)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.app.ActivityManagerProxy.startActivity(ActivityManagerNative.java:1885)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.app.Instrumentation.execStartActivity(Instrumentation.java:1412)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.app.Activity.startActivityForResult(Activity.java:3370)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.app.Activity.startActivityForResult(Activity.java:3331)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.support.v4.app.FragmentActivity.startActivityForResult(FragmentActivity.java:824)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.app.Activity.startActivity(Activity.java:3566)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.app.Activity.startActivity(Activity.java:3534)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at com.example.project.MainActivity.onOptionsItemSelected(MainActivity.java:93)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.app.Activity.onMenuItemSelected(Activity.java:2548)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.support.v4.app.FragmentActivity.onMenuItemSelected(FragmentActivity.java:366)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow.onMenuItemSelected(PhoneWindow.java:980)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at com.android.internal.view.menu.MenuBuilder.dispatchMenuItemSelected(MenuBuilder.java:735)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at com.android.internal.view.menu.MenuItemImpl.invoke(MenuItemImpl.java:149)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at com.android.internal.view.menu.MenuBuilder.performItemAction(MenuBuilder.java:874)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at com.android.internal.view.menu.ActionMenuView.invokeItem(ActionMenuView.java:547)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at com.android.internal.view.menu.ActionMenuItemView.onClick(ActionMenuItemView.java:115)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.view.View.performClick(View.java:4204)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.view.View$PerformClick.run(View.java:17355)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:725)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:92)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5041)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:793) 
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:560)
11-07 06:20:52.176: E/AndroidRuntime(4626):     at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)

Manifest XML of Project:

<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
package="com.example.project"
android:versionCode="4"
android:versionName="4.0" >

<!-- Permissions -->
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
<supports-screens android:anyDensity="true" />

<!-- SDK Settings -->
<uses-sdk
    android:minSdkVersion="11"
    android:targetSdkVersion="18" />

<!-- APP Start -->
<application
    android:allowBackup="true"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
    android:label="@string/app_name"
    android:theme="@style/AppTheme" >

<!-- App Activity -->
    <activity
        android:name="com.example.project.MainActivity"
        android:label="@string/app_name"
        android:screenOrientation="portrait" >
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>

<!-- Library Activity -->
    <activity android:name="com.example.lib.MainActivity" android:label="LibMain">
         <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"></action>
     </intent-filter>
    </activity>

</application>
<!-- END - APP -->

</manifest>

What am I overlooking? Any suggestions?

EDIT

I updated the manifest.xml with all other activities & somehow, that resolved the problem. The intent activity starts up without any errors. BUT, this is only on AVD. On actual device, it is still throwing same error. I have uninstalled the app from device completely and reinstalled, yet the same error.

if we make the particular activity as

android:exported="true"

it will be the launching activity. Click on the module name just to the left of the run button and click on "Edit configurations..." Now make sure "Launch default Activity" is selected.

Similar to Olayinka's answer about the configuration file for ADT: I just had the same issue on IntelliJ's IdeaU v14.

I'm working through a tutorial that had me change the starting activity from MyActivity to MyListActivity (Which is a list of MyActivity). I started getting Permissions Denial.

After much trial, toil and pain: In .idea\workspace.xml:

...
<configuration default="false" name="MyApp" type="AndroidRunConfigurationType" factoryName="Android Application">
    <module name="MyApp" />
    <option name="ACTIVITY_CLASS" value="com.domain.MyApp.MyActivity" />
    ...
</configuration>
...

I changed the MyActivity to MyListActivity, reloaded the project and I'm off to a rolling start again.

Not sure which IDE you are using, but maybe your IDE is overriding or forcing a specific starting activity?

Select your proper configuration for launching Application.

In my case i found mistake as below image:

I had just changed like:

May it will help to someone, Thanks :)

I was facing this issue on a react-native project and it came after adding a splash screen activity and making it the launcher activity.

This is the change i made in my android manifest XML file on the MainActivity configuration.

<activity_x000D_
        android:name=".MainActivity"_x000D_
        android:label="@string/app_name"_x000D_
        android:configChanges="keyboard|keyboardHidden|orientation|screenSize"_x000D_
        android:windowSoftInputMode="adjustResize"/>_x000D_
      <activity android:name="com.facebook.react.devsupport.DevSettingsActivity" />

I added the android:exported=true and the activity configuration looked like this.

 <activity_x000D_
        android:name=".MainActivity"_x000D_
        android:exported="true"_x000D_
        android:label="@string/app_name"_x000D_
        android:configChanges="keyboard|keyboardHidden|orientation|screenSize"_x000D_
        android:windowSoftInputMode="adjustResize"/>_x000D_
      <activity android:name="com.facebook.react.devsupport.DevSettingsActivity" />_x000D_
   

Add android:exported="true" in your 'com.example.lib.MainActivity' activity tag.

From the android:exported documentation,

android:exported Whether or not the activity can be launched by components of other applications — "true" if it can be, and "false" if not. If "false", the activity can be launched only by components of the same application or applications with the same user ID.

From your logcat output, clearly a mismatch in uid is causing the issue. So adding the android:exported="true" should do the trick.

In my case, this error was due to incorrect paths used to specify intents in my preferences xml file after I renamed the project. For instance, where I had:

<PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <Preference
        android:key="pref_edit_recipe_key"
        android:title="Add/Edit Recipe">
        <intent
            android:action="android.intent.action.VIEW"
            android:targetPackage="com.ssimon.olddirectory"
            android:targetClass="com.ssimon.olddirectory.RecipeEditActivity"/>
    </Preference>
</PreferenceScreen> 

I needed the following instead:

<PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <Preference
        android:key="pref_edit_recipe_key"
        android:title="Add/Edit Recipe">
        <intent
            android:action="android.intent.action.VIEW"
            android:targetPackage="com.ssimon.newdirectory"
            android:targetClass="com.ssimon.newdirectory.RecipeEditActivity"/>
</Preference>

Correcting the path names fixed the problem.

This is only for android studio

So I ran into this problem recently. The issue was in the build/run configuration. Apparently android studio had chosen an activity in my project as the launch activity thus disregarding my choice in the manifest file.

Click on the module name just to the left of the run button and click on "Edit configurations..." Now make sure "Launch default Activity" is selected.

The funny thing when I got this error was that I could still launch the app with from the device and it starts with the preferred Activity. But launching from the IDE seemed impossible.

If you are trying to test your app coded in android studio through your android phone, its generally the issue of your phone. Just uncheck all the USB debugging options and toggle the developer options to OFF. Then restart your phone and switch the developer and USB debugging on. You are ready to go!