Android: Detect General Use by User - android

I am working on an application that monitors phone use (specifically, what time its being used). Presently, I log times of phone calls, SMSs, MMSs, Screen turning on, screen turning off, and keygaurd unlocking. Now I want to determine when the user does any interaction other than whats listed above. Like:
1) Application use (Detect when an application is launched by the user and/or when it is actively being used by the user)
For this I have been playing with the Activity Manager but there does not seem to be a good way to get the information I need. It has information about whats in the foreground, background and what services are running, but lacks information on the amount of use, time of use, time of application launch, ect.
2) General Screen Interaction (Detect when a user is interacting with the screen in any/all ways)
I have yet to find any way to detect any form of general screen or keyboard interaction while my activity is not in the foreground. Any help here would be appreciated.
3) Other (I am open to other 'events' that would represent a user interacting with their phone)
I am open to other ideas about what I could possible look for when detecting user activity.

Presently, I log times of phone calls, SMSs, MMSs, Screen turning on, screen turning off, and keygaurd unlocking.
Note that your SMS/MMS support is dependent upon an undocumented/unsupported API and may not work on all devices or in future versions of Android.
Detect when an application is launched
Fortunately, there are no broadcasts for this, to help limit the scope of spyware.
General Screen Interaction (Detect when a user is interacting with the screen in any/all ways)
Fortunately, there is no way to determine this, to help limit the scope of spyware.

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.

Is it possible, using admin priviledge or similar permission, to fully unlock the device?

Background
Smart Lock feature allows to fully unlock the device under certain conditions, such as GPS location, connected Bluetooth, etc...
The problem
I'd like to make an app that does that, with other special conditions.
Given user's approval, is it possible to completely unlock the lock screen, even if it has a password, so that the user will continue as if he unlocked the device by himself?
What I've found
I know it's probably possible using accessibility service, to mimic user actions of entering the code or drawing the pattern.
There is probably a way to temporarily disable the lock screen, by using keyguard API (written here for example), but as I've read, those are deprecated and might not work on some devices and Android versions. I guess it also requires to have a foreground service for it to continue staying on this state.
The questions
Is there a better way? Is there a way to unlock the device, just like Smart Lock feature?
If so, how?
Is it true the Keyguard API is not recommended? What is there to worry about when using it? Or maybe it's completely safe to use, and can be used to fully unlock?

How to detect lock and unlock of screen pinning on android

I am working on an android app that should be used by students in some kind of practical test.
I am using the screen pinning that was introduced in Lollipop (startLockTask()), so when my app is launched the user needs to allow the locking.
I couldn't find a way to know when the user click ok for the locking and when he unlock the pinning? (The user can cancel the lock by holding both the Back and Recent buttons).
I am not looking for a way to know if the user currently in lock screen (getLockTaskModeState ()), i want to know if i have a way to handle the events of locking or unlocking.
I want that in the begining of the test i will be able to send information to my server if the users 'logged in' properly (by allowing the lock), and as well if the user unlock the device before the end of the test.
EDIT
Hey, people!
Please explain yourselves after downvoting!
If I wasn't exaplaining myself - i will try again if you will let me know.
I read a lot of questions and answers about general lock screen, but not the one of app pinning, I also read about check the status of the current task- if it is locked or not, but i didn't find answer to what i am asking - is there a way to handle the event of unlocking the 'screen pinning' of a specific app.
So please, explain your downvotes!
Device Admin Recevier class give you the event of pinning and unpinning... However the example use the class when the installed app is provisioned for device owner.. Not sure if you could use it. You may refer to this too : How to be notified when screen pinning is turned off in Android 5.0 Lollipop?
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/ActivityManager.html#getLockTaskModeState()
Just use the function as stated in the link.

Start app on first boot before keyguard (rooted phone)

I'm trying to start an app upon the first boot of the device before the keyguard appears. I need to ensure the first thing the user sees after the boot animation (which I've also changed) is this app. My app is just three screens of text in fullscreen mode with a next button in between them.
I realize that for most cases, this would be a terrible user experience. However, the phones we're shipping have a very specific purpose and because of this I need to meet the following criteria:
my app needs to be the first thing the user sees (after the boot animation of course) when they take the phone out of the box and power it on for the first time.
after the first boot, the phone should function as normal (i.e the keyguard should appear upon bootup instead of my app).
this only needs to work for lollipop since that's the android version we're shipping.
I can modify the Android framework if needed, but a solution where I don't have to is preferred.
My (Failed) Approach
Create an app that starts upon boot. Have the app dismiss the keyguard as the first thing it does.
The problem I found with this approach is the keyguard code is called before the app initialization code so the user sees the keyguard briefly and then sees my app.
A Possible Solution
I think the best way to do this is to add code in the framework to call my app before calling the keyguard. I'm imagining having a boolean that's used to keep track of whether it's the first time the device is powered on. If that boolean is true, open the app. If not, open the keyguard.
The problem is there's a lot of code in the android userspace boot process and I have a quickly-approaching deadline (don't we all?). How can I modify the framework code to show my app before the keyguard?
If there's a better way, please let me know that too!

Check volume button usage when screen is off

For this question I'm going to quote another user who got no response to their question:
I've written an Andoid app that uses the hardware Volume buttons for another purpose.
It works fine if the app is running and visible, but when I turn the
screen off or let it time out, the button clicks don't get into my
handlers.
Does anyone know if there is a way to detect these button clicks when
the screen is off?
Source: AV695's question
I'm working on an app myself that makes use of the volume buttons, but as this user also noted, the normal behavior of checking buttons with onKeyPress stops working once the screen is off. This is because the Activity gets paused on screen off.
Is there a way to keep the activity running while the screen is off, or check for the usage of the volume buttons when the screen is off? I tried using a Service for this before but it's impossible to check for the volume keys like that as noted by Commonsware.
I doubt that this is supported (without resorting to a battery-draining wakelock) at either the platform, kernel, or underlying radio firmware levels without modifications to the last to bring volume presses during sleep to the attention of the kernel.
Within the realm of reasonable system-ROM modifications, a more reasonable one might be to modify an existing open source ROM for the device to insert some custom platform level code into the handling of the power button usually used to wake up the device preparatory to unlocking it - that at least we know does get the attention of the kernel. That code could then inform the user by sound or vibration if there are unacknowledged notifications.
You could optionally wait briefly, check device orientation, or look for another key press to avoid doing this in an annoying way when the user is holding the device outside their pocket and trying to unlock it.
Or you could not use the volume key and just set a timer to wake up every 15 minutes and vibrate if there are unacknowledged notifications, avoiding the need to fumble in ones pockets.
You mention it's a custom request: if implies it's one off or low-volume, another option to consider would be that a few vendors have "bluetooth watches" out with an SDK that lets you push notifications from an android device.
If you can capture the notification when it's generated, you could push it to the user's wrist, and then let the phone go back to sleep.
You cannot intercept the key while your application is in background, but instead of listening to the KeyPress itself. You can register a ContentObserver, as described in this question.
As Chris Stratton mentioned, the only way to keep your App alive is by using battery-draining wake locks.
However, since I found myself in the same situation, I came up with another solution. Unfortunately, you'll need a rooted device as well as the Xposed framework.
With Xposed, which replaces the zygot process so you can hook yourself into any constructor and method of the system, you will be able to catch the raw KeyEvents before the system handles them.
This is done in PhoneWindowManager.interceptKeyBeforeQueueing(). By using a XC_MethodHook, you can use beforeHookedMethod() on the afore mentioned method to catch every hardware button event, even if the device is in deep sleep.
After catching events you are interested in, you can create a temporary wake lock to do your things but don't forget to release the wake lock after you finished your work.
A good example of how to accomplish this is the Xposed Torch Module.
If you, however, rely on a non rooted system, the bad news is that it's simply not possible without draining the battery...
I was also trying to implement volume button press detection in my app and I left that part to be developed later once the core part is done. I was able to detect volume key press while screen is on even when phone is locked, from a background service.
Background Video Recorder 2 (BVR2) (and possible BVR1 also, I did not try) is one of the apps that can detect volume key press even when screen is off. While trying to implement volume key detection while screen is off in my app, I installed BVR2, hoping to find how it works. To my surprise it gave my app the ablity to detect volume keys even when screen is off. My app had a ContentObserver to monitor volume changes, but was not working when screen is off. When BVR2 is active my app also could detect volume key press when screen is off. Still digging.
But BVR2 has its own trigger action, that is to record video, an action you may not want to occur just for the sake of you application detecting volume key presses.
Another app is QuickClick. This app can give your app what it lacks, the power to detect volume key presses even when screen is off, without extra unwanted actions. Just install QuickClick and do not configure any action. Create a ContentObserver to monitor for stream volume changes and you are ready. You app will now be able to detect volume key presses even when screen is off.
Please note that my app runs as a background service.
Both of the apps mentioned above are meant for other uses, but uses volume key detection to perform action. I am in no way connected to any of the apps mentioned.
If these apps, and possibly dozens others, can detect volume key press, it can be done. I request experts to find out how to do it, so that we can implement in our app without relying on another app.
If you find this answer useful, please up-vote.
I am not sure if it is as simple as this but check this android blog:
Allowing applications to play nice(r) with each other: Handling remote control buttons
It explains the usage of a broadcast receiver that receives the up/down volume controls and other music controls.
In summary you should use registerMediaButtonEventReceiver

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