How to Programmatically Enable/Disable Accessibility Service in Android

Question

I would like to programmatically enable/disable Accessibility Services listed under Settings->Accessibility option.

I could start Accessibility Intent like below:

Answer 1

The best you can do is manualy open the accessibilty settings with:

Intent intent = new Intent(Settings.ACTION_ACCESSIBILITY_SETTINGS)

and start the intent - you can also do it from the prefernece xml file:

intent android:action="android.settings.ACCESSIBILITY_SETTINGS"

Answer 2

AccessibilityService is special and cannot be started programmatically.

Answer 3

In instrumented tests I start my accessibility service like this:

private fun enableAccessibilityService() {
    val packageName = "com.example"
    val className = "$packageName.service.MyService"
    val string = "enabled_accessibility_services"
    val cmd = "settings put secure $string $packageName/$className"
    InstrumentationRegistry.getInstrumentation()
      .getUiAutomation(UiAutomation.FLAG_DONT_SUPPRESS_ACCESSIBILITY_SERVICES)
      .executeShellCommand(cmd)
      .close()
    TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(3)
}

I tested on Android 6 and 8. This also works for non-system apps.

Answer 4

Here is the working solution (if your activity is not running it will disable itself)

@Override
protected void onServiceConnected() {
    super.onServiceConnected();
    Toast.makeText(this, "Connected!",Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    ScheduledExecutorService scheduleTaskExecutor = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(1);
    scheduleTaskExecutor.scheduleAtFixedRate(new Runnable() {
        public void run() {
            serviceChecker();
        }
    }, 0, 5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}

private void serviceChecker(){
    if(!isActivityRunning(MainActivity.class)) {
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
            disableSelf();
        }
    }
}
protected Boolean isActivityRunning(Class activityClass)
{
    ActivityManager activityManager = (ActivityManager) getBaseContext().getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
    List<ActivityManager.RunningTaskInfo> tasks = activityManager.getRunningTasks(Integer.MAX_VALUE);

    for (ActivityManager.RunningTaskInfo task : tasks) {
        if (activityClass.getCanonicalName().equalsIgnoreCase(task.baseActivity.getClassName()))
            return true;
    }

    return false;
}

Answer 5

I found this post: How to programmatically check if a service is declared in AndroidManifest.xml?. The top answer talks about PackageManager, which tells you what is running.

Answer 6

From Android 6.0 you can use:

adb shell settings put secure enabled_accessibility_services packagname/servicename

The settings.db from old releases is no longer present on Android 6.0.