Meta's documentation on how to remove android permissions for Unreal Projects is completely wrong

[daniel_splitverse]

Hi everyone,

I'm writing this in the hopes it proves useful for someone who may be having issues removing unwanted android permissions from their Unreal engine project. This is something I've struggled to do for a number of days and I've seen a lot of other people struggling with it, so I want to get this down for anyone with the same problem

If you look at Meta's developer page here: https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/unreal/unreal-unwanted-manifest-permissions/

They tell you how to start a ManifestRequirementsOverride.txt document along with where to put it in your project. This part is correct.

The part where it tells you to put the uses-sdk and uses-feature lines from your AndroidManifest.xml is also correct (though there may be more than one uses-features line in your manifest so double check that).

What's wrong however, is it tells you to "Replace PERMISSION_NAME with the name of the unwanted Android permission". THIS IS INCORRECT! The permissions you put in the document are what WILL go into your project, and anything not included in ManifestRequirementsOverride.txt will NOT be in your project.

Let's take a look at Unreal's documentation on this topic, the one page that mentions ManifestRequirementsOverride.txt is here:

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/android-settings-in-the-unreal-engine-project-settings/

In the "extra permissions" section it says "<Project>/Build/Android/ManifestRequirementsOverride.txt, will replace the entire Requirements section."

Which is correct. The override file is not excluding the permissions listed in it, it's replacing that entire section of the manifest. I just compiled my project with the ManifestRequirementsAdditions.txt file devoid of any permissions and pushing that build to the Meta Quest Developer hub finally let me push without any permission warnings.

I wanted to post this on the SDK feedback section, but I don't have "sufficient priveleges" to do so, so if someone can get this to the meta documentation team to check it would be really good.

[Big_Flex]

Thanks @daniel_splitverse for this thorough post! I've shared it with Meta's documentation engineers.

[daniel_splitverse]

Wonderful, thank you for passing it on!

[Alighieri2000]

Seems as though the Meta documentation has been updated as recently as 7/31/2024, but it still gives the same instructions for excluding unwanted permissions. When we build with permissions listed in a ManifestRequirementsOverride.txt the resulting build requires those exact permissions. In fact, it seems as though it may add those permissions directly into the androidmaniftest.xml after building. 

In another thread, someone suggested that Meta should include a checkbox in the Plugin settings for each Meta-sensitive permission (like they already have for voice permissions). Getting permissions correct was a paint point for us partially because of the documentation, so I second this idea.