Question Detail

How to sign application with the same certificate declared for permission?

Here is the situation. I have an app with a Google Maps fragment which works very nice when I run it on my Android Phone through USB. The maps shows as it should. But when I upload it on Google Play and install it from there, the maps is blank and the log shows: “INTERACT_ACROSS_USERS_FULL”.

I've done some searching around and I found that it is a matter of signature. From a previous thread, someone recommended to add the following in the manifest:

<permission android:name="android.permission.INTERACT_ACROSS_USERS_FULL" android:protectionLevel="signature"/>

I have tried first with "signatureOrSystem" (from a previous thread) and now I'm trying with "signature" (waiting on Google Play now), but this is a blind thing to do, as I don't understand what it does. I also saw this:

"signature" A permission that the system grants only if the requesting application is signed with the same certificate as the application that declared the permission. If the certificates match, the system automatically grants the permission without notifying the user or asking for the user's explicit approval.

Unfortunately, I don't understand what this means. What does this mean: "if the requesting application is signed with the same certificate as the application that declared the permission".

For GooglePlay, I have created a certificate from scratch and attach it to the release.apk (Generate Signed APK). Was there a way to connect this certificate to the app itself? I'm really sorry for so many dumb questions, but I would really like to understand how to solve this issue.

Thank you in advance!