In my application i have done all the process and they are working very well. Now my device needs only one application or other application must not come front to the user's view..
Can I make my Application as Default application or the only application viewable by the user?
To avoid the unnecessary usage of other applications or to keep time consumption I plan to try this.
Would I need to change anything in the Manifest.xml file of this solution solve this?
You cannot do this on a stock device. Your best bet is to create a launcher that only allows launching your app. The user needs to agree to run it however, and it can always be changed and/or disabled in Settings.
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Hello Android developers,
Im more or less expierenced in Android programming and now i want to create an app that is allowed to access the display of another app or the activity that is less my app. Both apps should be active, should run. My app shall access the display data of the other app (also can be android system display), change it a bit and then show it again.
Is it possible without root rights?
Is there any Android support class that could help me? Which way i can go?
I hope my problem is clear and you can help me!
Ok now I have a more detailed question: How can open my app and show a transparent RelativeLayout, so that you can see what is below my app?
Thankyou a lot
Martin
If both applications are yours, you can access the other Activity using a connection between them (sockets, pipes, shared files, etc.)
If you'd like to create an overlay and display something on top of the other app, you can do that using a 'system window' popup. For example: Popup window in any app
If the other app is an arbitrary software without any modifications, such thing is not possible as it would lead to security issues. Both applications are Unix processes running in their own sandboxes without any direct communication.
In one of requirement I need to develop an application where user can launch two application in separate area of screen.
Say Application A in half of the part of screen and in rest of part other application.
I know this could not be straight way to achieve it, but is there any possibility to build such kind of app/launcher. I checked some of mobile ROM support multi application window support.
Any suggestion to achieve this.
You'd have to have this support done on system level, same way Samsung did for example. W/o this you are out of luck.
this is system level thing unless you make you own customize rom it pretty much impossible to do ,if you want to make customize rom then you will be able to do since its an system level this launcher uses system property to do so.
how to make application lock for android mobile.how to lock the application. I have done locking the home screen i.e the entire mobile, but im not sure how to lock particular application.
For this situation you need to catch the listener event to lock the installed apps..
I have to say that I don't quite get what you're trying to di.
If you're trying to prevent people from using an app after it's downloaded the only way I can think of is having an HTTP(S) request done to a server with an identifier that is set the first time the app is run and check a DB to see if it can run (set a boolean flag shouldRun or something like it).
If you wat to prevent it from being copied from one phone to another, you can use the Google Play built in option to prevent it.
if this is what you're trying to achieve, you should probably obfuscate your code as well
obfuscating code on android
There is currently no support in the Android SDK to reliably do this. The application locking apps that are currently on the market aren't reliable in that they exploit a security loophole and put themselves in the foreground when you try to run a given application. This can be bypassed without much difficulty if you know how, and the security flaws they exploit will hopefully be closed. Sorry.
Suppose i have installed an application onto my device - Now is it possible to add a button to some layout of it without redeploying the whole app using plugins/service kind of thing ?
You app will have to have the built-in functionality to download additional interface components.
However, there is no standard way to do this.
NO...this cant be done...
every time you need to reinstall the application on your emulator or the hardware device
there is no way you can do partial update of the application
I am creating an Android application for a customer which will be pre-installed and distributed together with the handsets. Now the customer asked me to lock down the ROM to prevent the future users from using anything else apart from this one app. I.e. no browsing, no email, nothing which could create any costs etc.
Now after some googling it seems to be relatively straightforward to remove applications from an Android image. But even if I can remove the web browser, email client, the Android Market App etc, how can I make sure that the user will not reinstall those apps via the USB connector? As Android is just Linux I am sure there are ways of denying all users the right to install new applications (or actually denying them pretty much anything apart from using this one app).
If somebody could point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.
EDIT:
To clarify things a bit, the customer does not want to use the android devices as phones, even though they are phones. With 100€ touch screen phones becoming available, it becomes viable to use those phones for just one specific purpose. In my customers case, the device will be used as something like a POS system: the employee uses the phone to process a certain kind of customer request, and for this the app needs to have a data connection which will accrue costs of course. Now obviously contracts can be set up that will oblige employees to pay any irregular costs themselves, but why make it that complicated?
This is not about taking freedom away from users but rather about using android phones as general purpose touch screen devices with a data connection that employees can use in a business environment without shooting themselves in the foot with unexpected high data connection cost.
There's not really a whole lot you need to do to make a single-purpose device. If you play your cards right, it should be something you can do without having to tinker with the ROM.
The quick-and-easy route would be to deploy your application as a replacement for the stock launcher, just like any of the other home replacements that are available. Setting that as the default would cover most of the opportunities for casual tampering, since it would leave no other way to launch or install anything else. The only other things I can think of off the top of my head that you'd need to do are snag the search button so it doesn't bring up the default Android search box atop your app and the green key so the phone app won't come up.
You would, of course, need a way to get to the original launcher to maintain the device and install new versions of your app. I'd accomplish that using a "Maintenance" menu item somewhere that asks for some form of authentication (e.g., a password), changes the home app back to the original and launches it. When you're done doing what you need to do, set your app as the default launcher and you're back in business.
Edit to address MAINERROR (now Octavian Damiean)'s comment:
Any activity in any application can register itself as a home application by adding an intent filter on the android.intent.category.HOME category. It's literally four lines in the manifest, and you don't have to write any code to support it. Take a look at lines 77-82 in the stock launcher's manifest for an example of how this is done. (Ignore the filters on DEFAULT and MONKEY; they're not necessary.) Once the activity is selected as the default handler for the category, it becomes the first thing launched at boot and what comes up when the Home key is pressed. HTC Sense, aHome, Panda Home, etc. all use this mechanism.
Launching the stock home (or any other application) explicitly is about five lines of code.
Side note: There's a application on the Market called Home Switcher that lets you launch any of the activities filtering on the HOME category or set one as the default.
Unless the handset manufacturer adds a lot of shovelware, the stuff that runs in the background should be inconsequential and won't get in the way.
There was a similar question already somewhere. You can indeed limit the functionality of your device by the amount you want or have to. In order to achieve this you will definitely have to build your own modified ROM.
You will have to touch the ROM because you will have to get rid of several applications running in the background. One you won't need them anyway and two as you don't need them they would only consume resources.
You might want to take a look at http://source.android.com there you will find more information about the sources which will hopefully direct you where you need.
Blrfl's answer is great, but it still has a problem: if the user long presses the HOME button, the recent applications popup will appear an the user will be able to launch another app.