Check for access to notifications using NotificationListenerService

Edit June 15th, 2016

I’m not sure which version of the support library this was added to, but it looks like this functionality is now built in. Simply use:

NotificationManagerCompat.getEnabledListenerPackages(context); (link to docs)

This returns a Set<String> that you can iterate through to find your package name. Note however that I haven’t personally tested this. But it looks like it’s probably preferred to use this in place of my old solution below.

---

Old Solution

This code is working for my app:

ContentResolver contentResolver = context.getContentResolver();
String enabledNotificationListeners = Settings.Secure.getString(contentResolver, "enabled_notification_listeners");
String packageName = context.getPackageName();

// check to see if the enabledNotificationListeners String contains our package name
if (enabledNotificationListeners == null || !enabledNotificationListeners.contains(packageName))
{
    // in this situation we know that the user has not granted the app the Notification access permission
    throw new Exception();
}
else
{
    doSomethingThatRequiresNotificationAccessPermission();
}

Typical values that I’ve seen for the enabledNotificationsListeners String look like this:

• User has given none of their apps Notification access permission
  • null or ""
• User has given one app Notification access permission
  • "com.woodblockwithoutco.remotecontrollerexample/com.woodblockwithoutco.remotecontrollerexample.RemoteControlService"
• User has given two apps Notification access permission
  • "com.scootrnova.android/com.scootrnova.android.ListenerService:com.woodblockwithoutco.remotecontrollerexample/com.woodblockwithoutco.remotecontrollerexample.RemoteControlService"

This implementation is very straightforward and works great 🙂

P.S. I got the idea to use the hardcoded “enabled_notification_listeners” String from this answer.