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Android 17’s New Contact Picker: Get Only the Contacts You Need

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Let’s say you are building a chat app. The user wants to invite a friend, so your app needs that friend’s phone number. Just one number.

Until now, the common way was to ask for the READ_CONTACTS permission. But that permission gives your app access to every contact on the phone. Names, numbers, emails, addresses — all of it.

That is a lot to ask for one phone number. Many users see that permission popup and tap “Deny”. And honestly, they are right to be careful.

Android 17 (API level 37) fixes this with a new Contact Picker. In this article, we will see what it is, how it works, and how to add it to your app with simple Kotlin code.

What is the Contact Picker?

The Contact Picker is a ready-made screen, built by Android, that lets the user choose which contacts to share with your app.

The idea is simple:

1. Your app says what kind of data it needs, like phone numbers or emails.
2. Android opens its own contact list screen.
3. The user picks one or more contacts.
4. Your app gets only what the user picked. Nothing else.