Android 17 Beta Introduces the Contact Picker and the Local Network Permission

Android 17 Beta 2 released, bringing with it the rumored Contacts Picker for selecting individual contacts and the Local Network Access permission for preventing apps from seeing other devices on your local network.

Since iOS released their Contacts Picker, Android was rumored to be working on an equivalent in Android 17. Now it’s confirmed with this beta release.

It appears to work similarly to Apple’s Contact Picker feature, allowing users to select individual contacts to share with a specific app, but not allowing for users to pick specific information from each contact to share.

GrapheneOS, a security and privacy-focused AOSP-based OS, has their own Contact Scopes that allows for much more granular control over exactly what data you share with apps as well as telling the app that it has full contact permission without actually granting it full access to your contacts, preventing apps from refusing to work if you don’t grant them contact access.

The update also introduces the Local Network Access permission to prevent apps from accessing your other devices on your local network, such as your phone, PC, tablets, smart devices, etc. It falls under the pre-existing NEARBY_DEVICES permission, so if that’s already granted, you won’t be prompted again.

Interestingly, they mention a “system-mediated, privacy-preserving device pickers to skip the permission prompt” to allow you to skip the permission prompt, so presumably you can request to connect to specific devices if you want to instead of asking for full local network access.

The local network permission was introduced in Android 16, but it wasn’t enforced yet. Now it appears the permission will be properly enforced for apps.

The local network permission was also one that was introduced first in iOS 14, so it’s great to see Android adding missing features.

Apps have been caught using users’ local network as a fingerprinting vector to re-identify them across apps and browsers. So, even if the devices on your local network are secure, it’s still important to prevent apps from accessing your LAN.

Android still lacks the paste permission of iOS which prevents apps from reading your clipboard whenever they want to. Android only gives a warning about this for now.

It’s great to see iOS and Android adopting new privacy protections. The competition between the two only benefits users and makes the platforms safer for everyone.