If I have a suite of Android tablets, is it possible that I can have Chrome be the only app that is used on the tablet whilst also locking Chrome to access 1 URL?
We're building a web app for school kids and we want to lock down its use for everything else.
I understand there's a kiosk mode that will lock down to a single app, just can't see anything about disabling the ability to navigate to another website.
I guess you're better going with building an webview app.
That way, you can use android's native kiosk mode to lock the device into that app, that's actually just a webview to your web app.
Edit: Also, I found out something that could be interesting for your case: Android's Lock Task Mode
From documentation:
Android can run tasks in an immersive, kiosk-like fashion called lock task mode. You might use lock task mode if you’re developing a kiosk application or a launcher to present a collection of apps. When the system runs in lock task mode, device users typically can’t see notifications, access non-allowlisted apps, or return to the home screen (unless the home screen is allowlisted).
Adding another answer because I actually found what you're looking for.
You can setup an application to change the device's policies to lock-on on the Chrome app and then lock Chrome to a single website.
Here is the full reference of the answer you're looking for.
Related
I am a beginner in Android development. I am developing a kiosk for an android 6. I can not unfortunately use the LOCKTASK MODE because it is a specific hardware with users unclear.
I finally found an open source kiosk that I want to adapt. Indeed, the kiosk can control the outputs of the user, especially avoid going into the settings.
But when I launch another application, we exit the kiosk mode and the user can touch the parameters.
Hence my question, is it possible to open an application in a "launcher" application like an iframe in html?
I am learning about Kiosk devices. I am going through the docs but stumbled across this thing.
As per docs-
Kiosk Apps are Chrome Apps that are designed to always run fullscreen using Single App Kiosk Mode on Chrome OS and do not allow the user to exit the app. They're great for a purpose-built Chrome device, such as a guest registration desk, a library catalog station, or a point-of-sale system in a store.
There is also a mention of Kiosk Mode
It is an Android kiosk app that replaces the default Home Screen or Launcher and restricts user to accessonly one application or a few allowed applications. ... It has become common to use off-the-shelf mobile devices to run business applications or self-service kiosks.
Though I am unable to understand as to how to develop a Kiosk app for Android.
Yes, you can build kiosk apps in android.
In addition to Morrison Chang's link in their comment I suggest you to read this article for more practical approach.
Note: This article has a point on making layer that catches user drag events and such. On newer Android versions(8.0) this no longer works.
You can create Kiosk application. From Lolipop 5.0 google is providing api for that.
https://developer.android.com/work/cosu
You can use Pinning or LockTask to achieve the Kiosk application feature.
Some like of sample git application
Git Link
Git Link2
You can make kiosk device by making your application owner of the device and then pinning the app on the device.
Please follow the below link it gives the detailed concept of making an application an owner device and then you can pin it using the code for pinning
https://medium.com/#ashubansal.ashishbansal/make-your-android-device-a-kiosk-device-so-that-no-one-can-open-anything-in-your-device-except-the-3bb42a0db8ea
If you are using a dedicated device for your kiosk app you can use the Android For Work APIs to have a single application or multi application kiosk.
Lock task mode API from the android allows you to lock the specific app to run on the device and always on the foreground. This will disable the Home button and Overview button as well making a true kiosk mode experience.
In order to use the API, you need to use the DevicePolicyManager and run your application as Device owner.
You can also refer here for details on how to create a Kiosk app
https://blog.esper.io/best-way-to-build-android-apps-in-kiosk-mode
I had implemented one launcher app for tab. This app is working good in normal mode but issue in safe mode. I am not able to set my app as launcher app in safe mode. Can anyone tell me how i can run my app as launcher app in safe mode.
Possible solutions is
Run my app as Launcher app.
Disable safe mode feature of android.
If device will go in safe mode, then ask password first to open this device.
If anyone knows better solution from above,please mention in comment. but i need this launcher app to be run in safe mode.
Thanks in advance.
Basically, you can't. The safe mode is designed to load built-in apps only
Only system apps run in safe mode. All the apps installed by the user doest not work..and there is a reason for that.
I think your ultimate goal is to create a kiosk mode. Where you want to restrict the user. You can two things:
If you are providing the mobile device you can use COSU from android 6.0 and above where there are APIs to disable safe mode. To access these apis your app needs to be the device owner.
You can access APIs to read UI contents of other apps and enforce clicks on them. To read other apps and enforce click you need to get special permission(Accessibility). Using this you can auto install apps, disable dialogs..
I need to write a kiosk launcher for a number of Android devices. It is supposed to launch Chrome or Firefox, showing a specific webpage in fullscreen. That page already calls the HTML5 requestFullScreen() API, but it doesn't work because that call is not coming from a user-generated event, and therefore gets declined by a browser for security reasons.
I did some searching and I found the following questions:
https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/88031/how-to-set-kiosk-mode-in-chrome
https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/115258/android-kiosk-mode
Both of these answers end up pointing to the existing apps or browsers, some of those are doing exactly what I'm trying to accomplish. This feels like an overkill, as I'm already using an app to get this thing going. And I can't use a special browser like suggested here because major browsers like Firefox or Chrome are more reliable in terms of updates and supported features.
But at the same time, the fact that these apps exist means that whatever I need to do is, well, doable. From Kiosk Browser Lockdown:
[Pro features]
Fullscreen mode / Hidden Toolbar
My question is this: what are the Android APIs they use to accomplish this? Is there anything I'm missing at this point? What are the documentation pages, guides or articles I should be looking for?
Thank you
I have similar problem with an commercial application running either in the linux system or windows OS. This application is made to run in a browser.
By the past, we opened a browser window, that we customised. and closing main window. :
* hiding menubar.
* hiding button bar.
* keeping close / lower window buttons
Fullscreen mode can not be used, since it hides window buttons.
Today, more and more browser based applications will arise (angularjs and similar applications coming...).
I found Atom Application can do this, using chromium .
Does this mean I have to embed a webbrowser with my application setup ???
And stick to some browser (eg. chromium) , altough my application is compatinble with many .
Do you 100% have to use Chrome or Firefox?
It is easier to do what you are saying by developing a kiosk app with a custom WebView that only shows the webpage you want to show. I could be wrong on this, but I believe WebViews on Android are technically Chrome (or something like it) on the back end, but either way, using one I doubt you would need to worry about updates. However, that is not what you asked... so I will describe a solution using Chrome or Firefox. My solution also means you need to have access to the devices you are loading your software on though, not a commercial app, because you need ADB.
It is completely possible to setup a Kiosk app in Android to only allow Chrome or Firefox to be used, and this is easily done if you set the application you load onto the device (to do whatever task you need) as the device owner. This is easy to do via ADB using a Command Prompt or Android Studio Terminal.
Just FYI...I am not positive setting up a 'true' Kiosk App is possible without device owner privileges, you cannot actually lock an app to the screen without it. In the case I describe, you get a true Kiosk implementation using a device owner, not a nifty work around that mimics that functionality like most of the apps you see in the market, however, I would also bet that those apps have some type of device admin privileges, which are less powerful than device owner, but still powerful.
The 'real' way I describe would be done via ADB (or the command line) with a similar snippet to the following command (I used this in a recent enterprise application that seems pretty similar to what you are describing):
adb shell dpm set-device-owner
com.viatechsystems.guestservices/android.app.admin.DeviceAdminReceiver
You would replace "com.viatechsystems.guestservices" with your Kiosk application's package name. You will get a confirmation message on the console once the device owner is set via ADB, but realize that this command could fail if a Device Owner is already set via some other method. To fix that issue, reset your device and try the command again and you should be good to go.
As far as locking your app (or in your case Chrome or Firefox, just find out what the package name is first) into Kiosk Mode after device owner has been set, you need to run this snippet, or something like it, in your application's main activity:
DevicePolicyManager DPM =
(DevicePolicyManager)getSystemService(Context.DEVICE_POLICY_SERVICE);
ComponentName ownerName = new
ComponentName(WHATEVER_CLASS_YOU_USE_TO_DISABLE_APPS.this
DeviceAdminReceiver.class);
//this.getPackageName() GETS CURRENT PACKAGE
String[] packages = {
//THIS IS CURRENT APP
this.getPackageName()
//YOU NEED TO USE CHROME OR FIREFOX PACKAGE
//NAME HERE INSTEAD FOR WHAT YOU WANT
};
DPM.setLockTaskPackages(ownerName, packages);
startLockTask(); //LOCKS PACKAGES IN KIOSK MODE
Now that should do what you needed, however in my recent app's case I needed to also ensure that if a user somehow got out of the Kiosk mode (which is technically possible on reboot, even with a Boot Listener implemented), they would only be able to open the application I wanted, and nothing else.
To do this you need to hide/disable applications with the device owner privileges you achieved earlier when you set your custom application to lock down Chrome, or Firefox, or whatever you want into Kiosk mode.
I can tell you how to find all of the package names on the device you load your app on, but I'm guessing you can figure that out... hint if you have issues, you use Android's Package Manager.
In this instance the package/app we want to hide is "com.example.HideThisPackage", simply replace it with whatever package name you want to hide/disable as the device owner.
//THIS VARIABLE AGAIN
DevicePolicyManager DPM =
(DevicePolicyManager)getSystemService(Context.DEVICE_POLICY_SERVICE);
//THIS VARIABLE AGAIN
ComponentName ownerName = new
ComponentName(WHATEVER_CLASS_YOU_USE_TO_DISABLE_APPS.this
DeviceAdminReceiver.class);
//USED TO HIDE INSTALLED APPS AFTER DEVICE OWNER ENABLED
DPM.setApplicationHidden(ownerName, com.example.HideThisPackage, true);
Then you should be good to go, let me know if you need any additional pointers but I used code almost exactly like this to do what it seems like you are describing a few months ago.
I'm developing a Point-of-Sale solution to be deployed on an iPad. The application will be engineered as a web application. I've seen some great info on how to lock down the iPad to a specific application and so this gets me halfway to my solution; the application I lock down to will be the browser.
Lock-down iPhone/iPod/iPad so it can only run one app
Now, can I take this one step further? Can I lock down the browser to disallow ad-hoc browsing? I'd like to do this because I want to ensure that the user is constrained to the confines of the POS application at all times.
(If I can't do this, I'll need to write a small shim application to host my web application and I don't want to do this, because this violates the zero-install architecture we're trying to achieve.)
Alternatively, is there a way to achieve this with an Android tablet? As the application is constructed with HTML5, we are relatively agnostic as to the client device.
Thanks for your advice!
You could add the Website to the Homescreen. Then it appears as an app - maybe you can then lock it down with the mechanism you mentioned.