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How can I find out exactly what permissions qualify for a given "human readable" permission listed in a given app's App Info in the Android UI?

If I open a given App info for an app installed on my Android device, I see permissions listed like

  1. take pictures and video
  2. modify or delete the contens of your shared storage
  3. access precise location only in the foreground
  4. record audio
  5. have full network access
  6. prevent phone from sleeping
  7. run foreground service
  8. change your audio settings
  9. etc

But these are fairly broad categories.

I would assume that there's one or many actual permissions requested by the app that would map into a given category above.

For example, here's a list of the possible actual permissions that would be requested by the app:

So my question is, for a given version of android, how do I figure out what are the set of permissions that could be requested by an app such that if any one of them was requested, then the given human-readable permission would appear for that app.

Or, equivalently, for a given "human-readable" permission, what is the set of possible permissions that could have been requested by the app that would make that "human-readable" permission appear for the app's permissions?

Is there a reference document anywhere that maps these actual android permissions into "human-readable" UI permissions?

Michael Altfield
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    I doubt such a document exists given that permissions are classified as normal, signature and dangerous. See permission overview for more details. Note that these keep changing with Android versions. It depends on the app and Android version so such an extensive document is unlikely – beeshyams Sep 26 '21 at 10:34
  • Yes, I would expect a continuous, versioned reference document with versions that map exactly to a given release of Android. – Michael Altfield Sep 26 '21 at 10:35
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    It's not officially documented. You need to go through the AOSP source code to get the real picture. – Irfan Latif Sep 26 '21 at 11:05
  • link to the relevant section of the code? – Michael Altfield Sep 26 '21 at 11:16
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    There's no single relevant section. You'll have to match string resources with their corresponding manifest permissions. All defined and referenced in multiple places. Just start searching in the repo: https://github.com/aosp-mirror/platform_frameworks_base – Irfan Latif Sep 26 '21 at 12:25
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    And you won't ever find a complete reference, as not even can each manufacturer define their own (as e.g. Samsung does to quite an extent), but so can app developers. For starters, I can refer you to my (incomplete and unversioned) list which also holds some references to other sources. – Izzy Sep 26 '21 at 20:19
  • apps can make-up permissions? That doesn't make sense. – Michael Altfield Sep 26 '21 at 20:34
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    It takes just a single line to define a new permission: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/permission-element. But obviously the permissions defined in apps don't appear in the App Info section. What you see there is a subset of requested permissions, defined in AOSP code. – Irfan Latif Sep 27 '21 at 05:00
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    May help: https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/38388/what-do-android-application-permissions-mean – Irfan Latif Sep 27 '21 at 11:23

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