Ask for password before uninstalling application

Question

First of all, I have researched a lot about my issue, but I could not find a proper solution so I am posting my query here. Hope to get a better solution to the issue:

Answer 1

The only way i see, is to provide your own uninstaller as part of your app (= an activity that lists all apps and allows to uninstall them). Your service could then check if your app was the one that started the packageinstaller and if not redirect the user.

It is not possible (at least on the Android 4.4 I tested with) to grab the uninstaller activity data without root or being a system app. This is because the uninstaller is not called as an independent task, but as an activity on the stack of the starting task (which is the Settings app when uninstalling from settings, etc). You can only see the Task details of the calling task.

However there might be some really dirty possibility left, that i didn't test to the end: You could register the hidden interface IThumbnailReceiver [1] with the hidden three argument version of ActivityManager.getRunningTasks [2]. It seems like only the GET_TASKS permission is needed to grab a thumbnail (see [3]). It should be possible to find out which app is going to be removed from the app thumbnail... - But as this solution uses hidden APIs, there is no guarantee that it will work with older/newer/vendored Android versions.

1. https://github.com/omnirom/android_frameworks_base/blob/android-4.4/core/java/android/app/IThumbnailReceiver.aidl
2. https://github.com/omnirom/android_frameworks_base/blob/android-4.4/core/java/android/app/ActivityManager.java#L766
3. https://github.com/omnirom/android_frameworks_base/blob/android-4.4/services/java/com/android/server/am/ActivityManagerService.java#L6725

Answer 2

If this is a corporate requirement (if you want to block a regular user from uninstalling your app, no chance, thanks Google for protecting us from bad devs), you should create a device administrator application. This way, although the user still can delete the app, it's one extra step if you want to prevent accidental erasing.

Before deleting your app, if it's enabled as device admin, the user must first disable the app as administrator, and the app receives this broadcast.

In your XML, put

<activity android:name=".app.DeviceAdminSample"
            android:label="@string/activity_sample_device_admin">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.SAMPLE_CODE" />
    </intent-filter>
</activity>
<receiver android:name=".app.DeviceAdminSample$DeviceAdminSampleReceiver"
        android:label="@string/sample_device_admin"
        android:description="@string/sample_device_admin_description"
        android:permission="android.permission.BIND_DEVICE_ADMIN">
    <meta-data android:name="android.app.device_admin"
            android:resource="@xml/device_admin_sample" />
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.app.action.DEVICE_ADMIN_ENABLED" />
    </intent-filter>
</receiver>

In the receiver, you have at least two methods worth noticing:

@Override
public CharSequence onDisableRequested(Context context, Intent intent) {
    …
}

@Override
public void onDisabled(Context context, Intent intent) {
    …
}

This way you know the user is potentially going to erase your app.

Complete guide for device administration is at https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/admin/device-admin.html

Answer 3

you should try something like the following :

1st - declare your broadcast recevier in the Manifest file , that will listen to QUERY_PACKAGE_RESTART :

  <receiver android:name=".UninstallReceiver">
          <intent-filter android:priority="999999">
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.QUERY_PACKAGE_RESTART" />
                <data android:scheme="package" />
          </intent-filter>
     </receiver>

2nd - your UnunstallIntentReceiver java class like the following :

public class UninstallReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver{

    @Override
    public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
        // fetching package names from extras
        String[] packageNames = intent.getStringArrayExtra("android.intent.extra.PACKAGES"); 

        if(packageNames!=null){
            for(String packageName: packageNames){
                if(packageName!=null && packageName.equals("application_package")){
                   // start your activity here and ask the user for the password 
                }
            }
        }
    }

    }

and please give me some feedback

Hope That Helps.

Answer 4

If you have root permissions make your app system (remove your apk-file from /data to /system directories). Then reboot device. After reboot your app is not available to delete by user (not superuser).