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Comment by mik3y | Hacker News Reader

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.

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If you're feeling dirty with my approach (with the endless list of hacks), you can, of course, use the masquerading way. It is also a possible solution, but it does not handle all types of "outbreaks". For example, you can leave the app via the status bar.

There's the new Screen Pinning feature in Android 5. It's not /quite/ the same thing, but it's definitely possible to use it as a kiosk mode thing.

Yes, you are right! But, you know, it is Android 5. It has a market share of 1.6%. We can talk about this cool new feature in ~3 years, when everybody has Android 5+ ;-)

if you're setting up a kiosk, you'll need to get a new model anyways.

You're probably getting something cheapish, though, which almost certainly won't have Android 5.0, and will likely _never_ have it.

Not necessarily true, you can often get an older Nexus device quite cheaply and then upgrade the OS. That's how I got my hands on Android 5.0 -- and it really transformed an old and tired phone into something new and marvelous.

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