How to get the Android device's primary e-mail

Question

How do you get the Android's primary e-mail address (or a list of e-mail addresses)?

It's my understanding that on OS 2.0+ there's support for multiple e-mail addresses, but below 2.0 you can only have one e-mail address per device.

Answer 1

Android locked down GET_ACCOUNTS recently so some of the answers did not work for me. I got this working on Android 7.0 with the caveat that your users have to endure a permission dialog.

AndroidManifest.xml

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS"/>

MainActivity.java

package com.example.patrick.app2;
import android.content.pm.PackageManager;
import android.support.v4.app.ActivityCompat;
import android.support.v4.content.ContextCompat;
import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.accounts.AccountManager;
import android.accounts.Account;
import android.app.AlertDialog;
import android.content.DialogInterface;
import android.content.*;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    final static int requestcode = 4; //arbitrary constant less than 2^16

    private static String getEmailId(Context context) {
        AccountManager accountManager = AccountManager.get(context);
        Account[] accounts = accountManager.getAccountsByType("com.google");
        Account account;
        if (accounts.length > 0) {
            account = accounts[0];
        } else {
            return "length is zero";
        }
        return account.name;
    }

    @Override
    public void onRequestPermissionsResult(int requestCode, String permissions[], int[] grantResults) {
        super.onRequestPermissionsResult(requestCode, permissions, grantResults);
        switch (requestCode) {
            case requestcode:
                if (grantResults.length > 0 && grantResults[0] == PackageManager.PERMISSION_GRANTED) {

                    String emailAddr = getEmailId(getApplicationContext());
                    ShowMessage(emailAddr);

                } else {
                    ShowMessage("Permission Denied");
                }
        }
    }

    public void ShowMessage(String email)
    {
        AlertDialog alertDialog = new AlertDialog.Builder(MainActivity.this).create();
        alertDialog.setTitle("Alert");
        alertDialog.setMessage(email);
        alertDialog.setButton(AlertDialog.BUTTON_NEUTRAL, "OK",
                new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
                    public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
                        dialog.dismiss();
                    }
                });
        alertDialog.show();
    }

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        Context context = getApplicationContext();

        if ( ContextCompat.checkSelfPermission( context, android.Manifest.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS )
                != PackageManager.PERMISSION_GRANTED )
        {
            ActivityCompat.requestPermissions( this, new String[]
                            {  android.Manifest.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS  },requestcode );
        }
        else
        {
            String possibleEmail = getEmailId(getApplicationContext());
            ShowMessage(possibleEmail);
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

Sadly accepted answer isn't working.

I'm late, but here's the solution for internal Android Email application unless the content uri is changed by provider:

Uri EMAIL_ACCOUNTS_DATABASE_CONTENT_URI = 
              Uri.parse("content://com.android.email.provider/account");

public ArrayList<String> GET_EMAIL_ADDRESSES ()
{
    ArrayList<String> names = new ArrayList<String>();
    ContentResolver cr      = m_context.getContentResolver();
    Cursor cursor           = cr.query(EMAIL_ACCOUNTS_DATABASE_CONTENT_URI ,null, 
                             null, null, null);

    if (cursor == null) {
        Log.e("TEST", "Cannot access email accounts database");
        return null;
    }

    if (cursor.getCount() <= 0) {
        Log.e("TEST", "No accounts");
        return null;
    }

    while (cursor.moveToNext()) {
        names.add(cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex("emailAddress")));
        Log.i("TEST", cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex("emailAddress")));
    }
    return names;
}

Answer 3

There are several ways to do this, shown below.

As a friendly warning, be careful and up-front to the user when dealing with account, profile, and contact data. If you misuse a user's email address or other personal information, bad things can happen.

Method A: Use AccountManager (API level 5+)

You can use AccountManager.getAccounts or AccountManager.getAccountsByType to get a list of all account names on the device. Fortunately, for certain account types (including com.google), the account names are email addresses. Example snippet below.

Pattern emailPattern = Patterns.EMAIL_ADDRESS; // API level 8+
Account[] accounts = AccountManager.get(context).getAccounts();
for (Account account : accounts) {
    if (emailPattern.matcher(account.name).matches()) {
        String possibleEmail = account.name;
        ...
    }
}

Note that this requires the GET_ACCOUNTS permission:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS" />

More on using AccountManager can be found at the Contact Manager sample code in the SDK.

Method B: Use ContactsContract.Profile (API level 14+)

As of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), you can get the user's email addresses by accessing their profile. Accessing the user profile is a bit heavyweight as it requires two permissions (more on that below), but email addresses are fairly sensitive pieces of data, so this is the price of admission.

Below is a full example that uses a CursorLoader to retrieve profile data rows containing email addresses.

public class ExampleActivity extends Activity implements LoaderManager.LoaderCallbacks<Cursor> {
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
        getLoaderManager().initLoader(0, null, this);
    }

    @Override
    public Loader<Cursor> onCreateLoader(int id, Bundle arguments) {
        return new CursorLoader(this,
                // Retrieve data rows for the device user's 'profile' contact.
                Uri.withAppendedPath(
                        ContactsContract.Profile.CONTENT_URI,
                        ContactsContract.Contacts.Data.CONTENT_DIRECTORY),
                ProfileQuery.PROJECTION,

                // Select only email addresses.
                ContactsContract.Contacts.Data.MIMETYPE + " = ?",
                new String[]{ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE},

                // Show primary email addresses first. Note that there won't be
                // a primary email address if the user hasn't specified one.
                ContactsContract.Contacts.Data.IS_PRIMARY + " DESC");
    }

    @Override
    public void onLoadFinished(Loader<Cursor> cursorLoader, Cursor cursor) {
        List<String> emails = new ArrayList<String>();
        cursor.moveToFirst();
        while (!cursor.isAfterLast()) {
            emails.add(cursor.getString(ProfileQuery.ADDRESS));
            // Potentially filter on ProfileQuery.IS_PRIMARY
            cursor.moveToNext();
        }

        ...
    }

    @Override
    public void onLoaderReset(Loader<Cursor> cursorLoader) {
    }

    private interface ProfileQuery {
        String[] PROJECTION = {
                ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.ADDRESS,
                ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.IS_PRIMARY,
        };

        int ADDRESS = 0;
        int IS_PRIMARY = 1;
    }
}

This requires both the READ_PROFILE and READ_CONTACTS permissions:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PROFILE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_CONTACTS" />

Answer 4

This is quite the tricky thing to do in Android and I haven't done it yet. But maybe these links may help you:

• Android Issue 1073:Google Auth Tokens should be accessible to 3rd party applications through an API
• SDK API AccountManager in Andriod 2.x+

Answer 5

This could be useful to others:

Using AccountPicker to get user's email address without any global permissions, and allowing the user to be aware and authorize or cancel the process.

Answer 6

I would use Android's AccountPicker, introduced in ICS.

Intent googlePicker = AccountPicker.newChooseAccountIntent(null, null, new String[]{GoogleAuthUtil.GOOGLE_ACCOUNT_TYPE}, true, null, null, null, null);
startActivityForResult(googlePicker, REQUEST_CODE);

And then wait for the result:

protected void onActivityResult(final int requestCode, final int resultCode,
                                final Intent data) {
    if (requestCode == REQUEST_CODE && resultCode == RESULT_OK) {
        String accountName = data.getStringExtra(AccountManager.KEY_ACCOUNT_NAME);
    }
}