Compatibility and permissions

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum Android	API 24
Compile SDK	36 or later
Core library desugaring	Required in every app that uses the SDK, whatever its minSdk, with desugar_jdk_libs 2.1.5 or later (Installation)
Java	17 source and target
Kotlin	2.1 or later. AGP 9 compiles Kotlin itself; with AGP 8, apply the org.jetbrains.kotlin.android plugin.
Distribution	Maven Central, ai.january:january-sdk-android:0.3.2

The SDK is verified with Gradle 9.5.1 and Android Gradle Plugin 9.2.1.

Libraries

The SDK brings in these libraries. Gradle raises your app's versions to at least these:

Library	Version
Jetpack Compose BOM	2026.06.00
CameraX	1.6.1
ML Kit barcode scanning	17.3.0
Activity Compose	1.12.4
Lifecycle runtime Compose	2.10.0
Retrofit	3.0.0
Moshi	1.15.2
Kotlin standard library and reflection	2.2.10

Coroutines (kotlinx-coroutines-core 1.10.2) are a runtime dependency only, so add kotlinx-coroutines-android to your app to call the SDK (Installation).

Permissions

The SDK's manifest adds three permissions to your app:

• INTERNET, for every January request.

• CAMERA, for JanuaryFoodScanner, which uses CameraX for photos and ML Kit for barcodes. The scanner requests it at runtime and shows its own denied and settings states.

• RECORD_AUDIO, for VoiceCaptureSession. Your app requests it at runtime, after the user taps a microphone control. Recognition uses Android's speech recognition service; the SDK doesn't send audio or transcripts to January or keep an audio file.

If your app doesn't use the scanner or voice capture, remove the permission it doesn't need in your app's manifest:

<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools">
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECORD_AUDIO" tools:node="remove" />
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CAMERA" tools:node="remove" />
</manifest>

The SDK is licensed under Apache-2.0.