Novice feelings: How can I avoid accidentally doing something wrong?

[timkrins]

Hi there.

This is a fantastic code lab - and even as a beginner Android developer I have been able to understand the guide very well.

But - as I am about to 'hit the switch' on setting my application as the device owner, something inside me yells out, "Oh no! What happens if I have made a mistake! How do I set my device back to normal?! Especially if my function that sets the COSU policy to false never runs!".

Assuming that the developer just wants to create a nice Android kiosk, and still allow developers full access to change things how they wish, how do we alleviate the novices' concerns?

[timkrins]

So, as I am living this experience, maybe my personal journey could help!

I set the device administrator to my application.
However - unlike the default application, my application has only one activity (the one I want pinned).
During some testing, when the COSU settings were unset, my applications launch Intents were no longer registered, and I could not relaunch my application through Android Studio.

I also could not remove the application (as expected), because it is a device administrator.

Now, I assume I could have relaunched my specific Activity some other way, but skipping this, I performed a factory reset on my device, because I know that will take me back to square one.

So, just so other beginners are aware - once you set a device owner, you cannot set a different administrator over adb. You must factory reset.

In this respect, if you are only testing your application, in the setDefaultCosuPolicies function, make sure you change
setUserRestriction(UserManager.DISALLOW_FACTORY_RESET, active);
to
setUserRestriction(UserManager.DISALLOW_FACTORY_RESET, false); // ALWAYS ALLOW FACTORY RESET

Then, when you are certain that your application works as desired, you set it back to active.

[timkrins]

Also, another thing to note.

When you have installed and set your application to device administrator, it seems you cannot re-install (or debug) your application.

I changed my mind about using my own application as the device administrator, and instead used TestDPC!

[timkrins]

I found some interesting information at http://www.sureshjoshi.com/mobile/android-kiosk-mode-without-root

You can use mDevicePolicyManager.clearDeviceOwnerApp("com.example.yourapplication"); somewhere in your code that will unset the device owner. You should then be able to re-debug or develop your application, without going through the full factory reset.