How to Create a Working Kiosk Mode in Android

I use a few of these hacks. But I wanted to be 100% sure the user could not open certain builtin apps, like the phone app. So my kiosk device is locked and my app runs on top of the lock screen.

My target device is Android 2.3. Does anyone need to see some code?

Last I looked into this, it seemed that masquerading as a custom launcher was the way to go. Any reason to avoid this technique?

Aside: As a long time Android hacker, it pains me to see iOS seems to do this better with "Guided Access" mode. Just look at the variety of apps which use it: Square Register, Envoy, etc.. Sorta sad it's not an Android platform feature by now.

> Exit mechanism: Don't forget to implement and test an exit mechanism in your app.

We locked our kiosks in a frame that disallowed hitting menu buttons. To escape from the app without unlocking the frame, I implemented a "magic menu," consisting of three invisible buttons in the corners of the app. They would launch an admin menu if they were hit in the correct sequence within the correct amount of time.

Nice writeup. I had to do most of those things for my startup. I replaced the home screen in its entirety so there's no way to escape our app at all. If we need to administer it at all there's ssh installed. I just spent today building logstash-forwarder into the image so we can view logs from all devices in real-time.

I did not give Kiosk a lot of thought (it is not my use-case), but Lollipop's Screen Pinning feature looks like a good fit to me.

Very interesting workarounds!