Contact picker

The Android Contact Picker is a standardized, browsable interface for users to share contacts with your app. Available on devices running Android 17 or higher, the picker offers a privacy-preserving alternative to the broad READ_CONTACTS permission. Instead of requesting access to the user's entire address book, your app specifies the data fields it needs, such as phone numbers or email addresses, and the user selects specific contacts to share. This grants your app read access to only the selected data, ensuring granular control while providing a consistent user experience with built-in search, profile switching, and multi-selection capabilities without having to build or maintain the UI.

Integrate the Contact Picker

To integrate the Contact Picker, use the Intent.ACTION_PICK_CONTACTS intent. This intent launches the picker and returns the selected contacts to your app.

Unlike the legacy ACTION_PICK, the Contact Picker lets you specify multiple data fields your app requires at the same time. You do this using Intent.EXTRA_REQUESTED_DATA_FIELDS, passing an ArrayList<String> of MIME types defined in ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.

Common MIME types include:

• ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE
• ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE
• ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.StructuredPostal.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE

Launch the picker

Use registerForActivityResult with the StartActivityForResult contract to launch the picker. You can configure the intent to allow single or multiple selections.

Select a single contact

In this example, the app requests only phone numbers. The picker will filter the list to show only contacts with phone numbers and allow the user to select a specific number.

// Define the specific data fields you need
val requestedFields = arrayListOf(
    ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE
)

// Set up the intent
val pickContactIntent = Intent(Intent.ACTION_PICK_CONTACTS).apply {
    type = ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_TYPE
    putStringArrayListExtra(Intent.EXTRA_REQUESTED_DATA_FIELDS, requestedFields)
}

// Launch the picker
pickContactLauncher.launch(pickContactIntent)

// Define the specific data fields you need
ArrayList<String> requestedFields = new ArrayList<>();
requestedFields.add(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE);

// Set up the intent
Intent pickContactIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_PICK_CONTACTS);
pickContactIntent.setType(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_TYPE);
pickContactIntent.putStringArrayListExtra(Intent.EXTRA_REQUESTED_DATA_FIELDS,
        requestedFields);

// Launch the picker
pickContactLauncher.launch(pickContactIntent);

Select multiple contacts

To enable multi-selection, add the Intent.EXTRA_ALLOW_MULTIPLE extra. You can optionally limit the number of items a user can select.

val requestedFields = arrayListOf(
    ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE,
    ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.StructuredName.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE
)

val pickMultipleIntent = Intent(Intent.ACTION_PICK_CONTACTS).apply {
    type = ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_TYPE
    putStringArrayListExtra(Intent.EXTRA_REQUESTED_DATA_FIELDS, requestedFields)
    // Enable multi-select
    putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_ALLOW_MULTIPLE, true)
    // Optional: Set a custom limit (max 50 recommended)
    putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SELECTION_LIMIT, 10)
}

pickMultipleLauncher.launch(pickMultipleIntent)

Handle the results

When the user completes the selection, the system returns a RESULT_OK and a Session URI. This URI grants temporary read access to the selected data.

You can query this URI using a standard ContentResolver. The resulting Cursor contains the requested data fields and follows the schema of ContactsContract.Data.

private val pickContactLauncher = registerForActivityResult(
    ActivityResultContracts.StartActivityForResult()
) { result ->
    if (result.resultCode == Activity.RESULT_OK) {
        // The result data contains the Session URI
        val sessionUri = result.data?.data
        sessionUri?.let { uri ->
            processSelectedContacts(uri)
        }
    } else {
        // User cancelled the picker
    }
}

private fun processSelectedContacts(sessionUri: Uri) {
    // Define the projection (columns) you want to retrieve
    val projection = arrayOf(
        ContactsContract.Data.CONTACT_ID,
        ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME_PRIMARY,
        ContactsContract.Data.MIMETYPE,
        ContactsContract.Data.DATA1 // Generic data column (Phone number, Email, etc.)
    )

    contentResolver.query(sessionUri, projection, null, null, null)?.use { cursor ->
        val mimeTypeIdx = cursor.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Data.MIMETYPE)
        val dataIdx = cursor.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Data.DATA1)
        val nameIdx = cursor.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME_PRIMARY)

        while (cursor.moveToNext()) {
            val mimeType = cursor.getString(mimeTypeIdx)
            val dataValue = cursor.getString(dataIdx)
            val name = cursor.getString(nameIdx)

            when (mimeType) {
                ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE -> {
                    Log.d("ContactPicker", "Picked Phone: $dataValue for $name")
                }
                ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE -> {
                    Log.d("ContactPicker", "Picked Email: $dataValue for $name")
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Backward Compatibility

For apps targeting Android 17 and higher, the system automatically upgrades the existing Intent.ACTION_PICK intent to use the new Contact Picker interface.

If your app already uses ACTION_PICK, you don't need to change your code to receive the new UI. However, to take advantage of new features, such as receiving a single Uri to query contact data, switching between personal & work profiles or multiple data field requests, you must update your implementation to use Intent.ACTION_PICK_CONTACTS or the new intent extras.

Testing on older SDKs

You can test the new picker behavior on devices running Android 17 and higher even if your app targets a lower SDK version by adding the EXTRA_USE_SYSTEM_CONTACTS_PICKER boolean extra to your ACTION_PICK intent.

Best practices

• Request only what you need: If your app only needs to send an SMS, request Phone.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE. The picker will automatically filter out contacts that don't have phone numbers, resulting in a cleaner UI for the user.
• Persist data immediately: The Session URI grants temporary read permission. If you need to access this contact information later (after your app process is killed), your app has to persist the contact data.
• Don't rely on Account Data: To protect user privacy and prevent fingerprinting, account-specific metadata is stripped from the results.