This is kind of a compose question and kind of an ...

# compose

[Jesse Hill]

This is kind of a compose question and kind of an android question. The compose app I’m working on recently underwent security testing and one of the issues brought up was Activity androidx.compose.ui.tooling.preview.PreviewActivity is not protected [android:exported=true]. I was trying to find out why it’s important for the PreviewActivity to be exported or if I can make it not exported for my project. As far as I can tell setting android:exported=false for the PreviewActivity only affects deploying a @Preview to the device. Will making this change have any negative effects on a release build of the app? If this is a non-issue, is there a link to release notes/documentation as to why it isn’t an issue?

[Jesse Hill]

I’m thinking that this part of the implementation means that just being able to start the activity isn’t a security issue as long as the app isn’t debuggable?

override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        if (applicationInfo.flags and ApplicationInfo.FLAG_DEBUGGABLE == 0) {
            Log.d(TAG, "Application is not debuggable. Compose Preview not allowed.")
            finish()
            return
        }

        intent?.getStringExtra("composable")?.let { setComposableContent(it) }
    }

[Adam Powell]

@nosuid

[nosuid]

Yes, that's correct. The PreviewActivity can not be started if the app is not debuggable and there is no impact on release.