React Native Publishing APP on Play Store Rejected (permissions)

Question

I have just completed my app which I have React Native using Expo. It is my first time uploading an APP to Play Store. After I got finished uploading my APP and all the requirements I got an Email from Google that my APP got Rejected, and I have no idea how to fix the issues they have listed.

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Here are the reasons:

The declared function DEVICE_AUTOMATION is allowed, but not approved for the specific permissions that are listed in your manifestREAD_SMS . These excess permissions READ_SMS must be removed from your app manifest

The declared functionality DEVICE_AUTOMATION is determined to be unnecessary or not aligned with the core functionality of your app.

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Any help would be grateful.

Best Regards Musayyab

Answer 1

Starting from Jan 9, 2019, Google starts restricts the use of high risk or sensitive permission including SMS or Call Log .

According to mail, you can't use READ_SMS permission in your application. (It does not matter what application make by whatever language) Indeed, Google just judge 'Your application doesn't need READ_SMS function'.

If you tried to use READ_SMS as OTP(or Phone Authentication), You can use SMS Retriever API to achieve almost same feature.

In other cases, there are no alternatives available at this time.

Answer 2

Android apps have something calledPermissions which the app tell s the phone what it would like to do. The purpose of these is to protect the privacy of the Android User.

Google Play has recently got stricter in what apps it will allow to use some of these permissions, as they are often used by abusive apps. One of these permissions is READ_SMS. If an app is granted this permission it is allowed to read all of the users SMS messages.

It sounds from your comment like you don't want your app to read the users SMS messages. So in this case the check worked - your app was asking for a permission it didn't need. You should remove the request for the READ_SMS permission from your app.

There are instructions on editing the permissions in a react native app here . So possibly you added this permission to your AndroidManifest.xml file. If you did, then you should remove it.

If you didn't add it yourself, it is a possible a bad third-party library you added to your app added the permission. If so you should stop using that library.