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Android: Taking complete control of phone(kiosk mode), is it possible? How?

Asked 2011-08-19T12:24:34.500
33

We have a program that we install on the phones and loan the phones to users for a certain period. We would like the phones to be used solely for running our application (no phone calls, no games, no nothing). The phones will be rooted.

So the things we need:

  • Run in full screen, nothing else will be visible
  • Home button and other device buttons won't work
  • Our app will run automatically on startup

It doesn't have to be "hacker proof", but should be sufficient to prevent average user messing with the device.

Is this possible? I have done similar things on Symbian & Windows Mobile but I don't have much experience with this stuff on Android. How may this be achieved?

UPDATE 2015: If you don't mind limiting your app to single phone vendor, Samsung has introduced the KNOX SDK that lets you achieve kiosk mode and much more easily without rooting the phone. See details at: https://seap.samsung.com/developer/sdk/knox-standard-android

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5

Vineet's solution works. However i think it requires two more permissions that i found out from here

So the permissions needed are

android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE, android.permission.MODIFY_PHONE_STATE, android.permission.CALL_PHONE

Although it worked for me like this

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE"/>

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CALL_PHONE"/>

answered 2012-06-08T09:03:18.827

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