How to prevent launching other application from my application - android

I want to write an application that can prevent some application from launching. My requirement is to block some application for some period. So what is the way to block or prevent others application from starting or launching through my application.
My question is -- Is it possible to prevent launching other application from my application? If yes then what is the way.
I tried killing the running application. But it only kills when the application is in the background. When the application is in opened state(displayed on the screen) the killing of the application is not working.

So what is the way to block or prevent others application from starting or launching through my application.
Write your own home screen, so you are the one doing the launching, and implement your launching rules there.
This will cover basic scenarios. It will not help with:
Stopping apps that are launched via notifications (e.g., in response to an incoming SMS)
Stopping apps that are launched via other things in the system bar on tablets (e.g., some tablets let you get to the Settings app from there)
Stopping the user from rebooting their device in safe mode and getting rid of your home screen
The only way to handle those scenarios is to create your own ROM mod with adjustments to the operating system, then distribute that ROM mod (e.g., on your own devices).

Related

stopping the user from forcing stop my app

About Android (6.0 to the last version)
I'm developing an app and we want that the user, once he accepts all the terms, don't be able to kill the process or force stop the app. Honestly, I'm completely lost right now, because on the last versions of android, and specially some brands like Xiaomi, we are having a lot of trouble with it, and we don't know how to act right now.
In the case that it could not be possible, could at least get an alert whenever the user is killing the app?
Thanks!!
It is not possible to prevent the user from killing an app. Android is a unique system where the app has no direct control over its lifecycle but the system has. The system can (and will, when required) kill the app or any of its processes at its own will. To make your app aware of these changes, the android framework provides for various callbacks such as onPause, onStop and onDestroy which are called in succession when the user kills the app.
Side Note : There is no guarantee that onDestroy() will be completely executed when the app is killed. Do not place essential code there.
Of course, you can block or try to prevent the user from closing your app by overriding the back, home and recent buttons but it is highly recommended not to do so. Even if you do so successfully, the user has other means to close your app such as rebooting their phone.
So what to do?
You are looking for a kiosk mode app. Kiosk mode is used for single purpose phones such as at a restaurant or for a cab driver. Kiosk mode apps lock down the user to only a specific app (or a specific set of apps).
For normal apps, it is not possible to prevent the user from force closing your app. You can only get alerts by checking for lifecycle changes as described above. Moreover, it is not at all recommended to change the natural behavior of the hardware buttons on android. The user can still find a way to close your app. If your app is doing something really essential which should proceed in the background, consider using a service for that instead. Also, the user can uninstall your app at anytime if they find your app being too intrusive and you won't be able to do anything in that scenario.
Tl;dr: Use kiosk mode to prevent the user from exiting the app. This will only allow the user to access your app(s) in their device.
Usually you cannot! Even if you try to disable some buttons, user can always stop app or restart device. In addition at times, the OS will stop the App. Your responsibility as a programmer is to program around this, and give the user the feel that it never stopped. If you are doing background monitoring, you will need to use service. Users will still be able to stop service. Having said that, you can set your app as a Device Administration app, see here, which may disallow stopping, but unless you are distributing internally to a company, noone will install.

Start Service on boot without activity (but with root)

I want to create an app only for my phone, that runs all the time in background - and you should never stop that service from running.
My goal is, that this app is sending the current location data to my computer at home - to get it back, when it has been stolen for example, or when I lost it.
The problem is, that it is not possible to start a service without having an activity and/or launcher icon (because the thief should not know this).
But: My phone is rooted, so is it possible to start the service anyway?
And also: When I place my APK into the /system/app partition, will the APK persist after doing a factory reset?
Yes, you can. Rooting your phone doesn't matter for what you want to do, and if anyone tried to factory reset your phone, your app will still not be deleted, if you put your apk in /system/app partition as you said. It will react as if it was a normal system app. But of course, you must also set the correct permissions for your app when moving it to the system folder to be able to work.
And to prevent the thief from knowing your app, you can just name your app with an ambiguous name and without an icon that describes what your app does, because your app will still be visible in your application manager from your phone settings. Along with that, you can do the following:
To create an app that does not have an icon in the Home Launcher, just remove the intent filter android.intent.category.LAUNCHER of your activity from the AppManifest.xml.
To implement your background application, it strongly depends on what you want to do. You can create a Service for long running tasks, BroadcastReceiver to react to specific events or activities with intent filters.
Edit:
In order to let your app work automatically, you must put your app in this folder /system/priv-app. This way, your app will be started everytime you boot your device.

Make android app that is run as the only app on the android device.

I want to make an android app that runs as the only app on the android device. If the unit is reset I want this app to start up and run.
The reason for this is we are going to be buying these special 7 inch wall mounted tablets which have android OS on them (here is a link to the device: http://www.geekland.co/7-Android-42-Panel-PC-Wall-or-Desk-Mounted-Tablet-with-RJ45-GK-Q896.htm). And we are going to be programming an app that does various things.
However, it is imperative that the app cannot be exited and that if the system restarts, that app is what runs. We don't want random people messing with the device. We want to restrict everything just to that app.
Of course, maybe with an admin password you would be able to exit the app.
Can this be done somehow within an android app? Or does this call for, I don't know, making some new android OS clone or something? (something I'm not sure of how to do).
As I know there are few ways to do this.
Override buttons as in here
Write a home screen application as in here
Lock apps using apps similar to AppLock some can even lock system apps and settings
If the devices are running Lollipop or newer, you can do this with the Task Locking API. First you need to make your app (or some other app) the device owner and grant your app the lock task permission so that locking can be done without user confirmation. Then just add a receiver in your manifest for the BOOT_COMPLETED intent and lock the task when the app starts.
I wrote an open source app that acts as the device owner and simplifies granting lock task permission to your own apps.

Kiosk mode in Android at runtime

Setting any application in Kiosk mode in run time and maintaining its state even after switching off the device in android.
We have created an application which display the list of all the installed application in the android. We select few of the application to run in kiosk mode. Now we want that even after restarting the device, application should be in kiosk mode.
But it is not happening in my case.
Kindly help us
I have Completed Kiosk mode in Android. I have two methods to handle this scenario
1.)Make your application as home launcher so it gets loaded whenever you restart the device.
2)If you dont want to make it as launcher, Then create a broadcast receiver with Boot_Completed receiver and start your application from it.

How to implement an app locker in android?

I am not satisfied with any of the app locker programs for Android that I have found and would like to create my own, but I am having trouble figuring out how to implement the actual lock. How does one go about implementing an app locker for Android?
There are two issues:
Detecting an Intent, usually from the launcher calling startActivity() or from an ad launching the market app (I'm not talking about broadcast intents -- I need to handle explicit Activity Intents).
The permissions for the locker apps I have seen all have "read system log files" and/or "retrieve running applications" which suggests they might use polling to look for app launches. I think I could do this, but I would like to find a better solution if possible.
Preventing the locked app from processing the Intent. I would prefer not to allow the locked app to run at all until the passcode is entered since it is impossible to tell what it might do when it starts up.
When running my current app locker, logcat shows "ActivityManager: Starting activity" first with the Intent for the locked app, then again with the Intent for the app locker, with nothing in between (separated by 10-20ms). If I enter the correct passcode then I see "ActivityManager: moveTaskToBack".
I have experimented with a test app which demonstrates that, using my current app locker, none of the Activity callbacks are invoked if the app is locked and I do not enter the correct passcode. So it appears to be preventing the app from starting (but I don't know how).
I could use ActivityManager.killBackgroundProcesses() to stop an app, but I have no guarantee that the app hasn't already started running by the time it gets "killed".
I might be able to use PackageManager.setApplicationEnabledSetting() to prevent an app from being instantiated, but I don't think that will take care of apps that are already running (which shouldn't be allowed to process new Intents or come to the foreground). I might be able to use killBackgroundProcesses() to stop all running locked processes so they would have to be re-instantiated. But I don't like this approach because other apps could mess with the Enabled settings and defeat the lock.
Optimally, the system would send every Intent to my app for inspection and allow me to stop or let it pass through, but I'm pretty sure that's not possible (at least, not for explicit intents to start activities from a launcher).
Does anyone know how app locker apps are implemented, or have any bright ideas on how it could be done?
I would look into the lifecycle. Once the app in question begins to load, some activity from that package will be added to the forefront activity.
A scan of the changes in forefront activities might do the trick.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Activity.html#ProcessLifecycle

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