iOS 10 - Changes in asking permissions of Camera, microphone and Photo Library causing application to crash

ios plist ios10 user-permissions
Syed Ali Salman picture Syed Ali Salman · Jul 21, 2016 · Viewed 137k times · Source

iOS 10, Now Requires User Permission to Access Media Library, Photos, Camera and other Hardware like these. The solution for this is to add their keys into info.plist with a description for user that how we are using their data,

I could only find a few keys 

NSPhotoLibraryUsageDescription
NSMicrophoneUsageDescription
NSCameraUsageDescription

I want to know if there are more keys also for other hardware as in iOS 10 if you haven't provided info.plist with proper keys description your application will crash if build using XCode - 8 beta.

Answer

KlimczakM picture KlimczakM · Jul 21, 2016

[UPDATED privacy keys list to iOS 13 - see below]

There is a list of all Cocoa Keys that you can specify in your Info.plist file:

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/General/Reference/InfoPlistKeyReference/Articles/CocoaKeys.html

(Xcode: Target -> Info -> Custom iOS Target Properties)

iOS already required permissions to access microphone, camera, and media library earlier (iOS 6, iOS 7), but since iOS 10 app will crash if you don't provide the description why you are asking for the permission (it can't be empty).

Privacy keys with example description: cheatsheet

Source

Alternatively, you can open Info.plist as source code: source code

Source

And add privacy keys like this:

<key>NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription</key>
<string>${PRODUCT_NAME} always location use</string>

List of all privacy keys: [UPDATED to iOS 13]

NFCReaderUsageDescription
NSAppleMusicUsageDescription
NSBluetoothAlwaysUsageDescription
NSBluetoothPeripheralUsageDescription
NSCalendarsUsageDescription
NSCameraUsageDescription
NSContactsUsageDescription
NSFaceIDUsageDescription
NSHealthShareUsageDescription
NSHealthUpdateUsageDescription
NSHomeKitUsageDescription
NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription
NSLocationUsageDescription
NSLocationWhenInUseUsageDescription
NSMicrophoneUsageDescription
NSMotionUsageDescription
NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription
NSPhotoLibraryUsageDescription
NSRemindersUsageDescription
NSSiriUsageDescription
NSSpeechRecognitionUsageDescription
NSVideoSubscriberAccountUsageDescription

Update 2019:

In the last months, two of my apps were rejected during the review because the camera usage description wasn't specifying what I do with taken photos.

I had to change the description from ${PRODUCT_NAME} need access to the camera to take a photo to ${PRODUCT_NAME} need access to the camera to update your avatar even though the app context was obvious (user tapped on the avatar).

It seems that Apple is now paying even more attention to the privacy usage descriptions, and we should explain in details why we are asking for permission.

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