How to share app's private files via intent?

Question

I am building a photo vault (that helps users hide photos) for Android 11 onwards since the birth of mighty "scoped storage" I am able to hide photos by just moving them to the app's private directory.

Now the problem arises when I want to share an image without moving it to the public (shared) directory.

I followed the implemented FileProvider, which converts the image path to URI but when I share the content URI via an intent, the following error pops up in logcat and the receiver application can not read the image.

Permission Denial: reading androidx.core.content.FileProvider uri content://com.androidbull.incognito.vaultreborn.provider/photos/Screenshot_20211221-105658.jpg from pid=10376, uid=1000 requires the provider be exported, or grantUriPermission()

Here is the code I wrote to perform sharing

    val imagePath = File(this.filesDir, "photos")
    val newImageFile = File(imagePath, currentImage.imageName)

    val imageUri = FileProvider.getUriForFile(this, "$packageName.provider", newImageFile)

//
    val shareContentIntent = Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND)
    shareContentIntent.data = imageUri
    shareContentIntent.addFlags(
        Intent.FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION or Intent.FLAG_GRANT_WRITE_URI_PERMISSION
    )
    startActivity(Intent.createChooser(shareContentIntent, null))

and just in case you are wondering here is the my provider in AndroidManifest.xml

<provider
        android:name="androidx.core.content.FileProvider"
        android:authorities="${applicationId}.provider"
        android:exported="false"
        android:grantUriPermissions="true">
        <meta-data
            android:name="android.support.FILE_PROVIDER_PATHS"
            android:resource="@xml/file_paths">
        </meta-data>
    </provider>

And finally the file_paths.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<paths>
<files-path
    name="photos"
    path="photos/" />
</paths>

Can anyone please help me here?

Thank you :)

Answer 1

Okay, so it turned out that there was a bug in my head, not in the code. I was only testing it for the very first image that I moved into my vault, somehow this image was showing perfectly but had a file size of 0 bytes, so that was the problem. I tested other images and worked perfectly.

Thanks, everyone for paying attention :)