Disable Home Button in Android Ics (4.0)

Disable Home Button in Android ICS (4.0)

How about a workaround..

Write a second app that implements the home screen, when the home screen button is pressed this app will come to the foreground. From this app you then need to push your main app back to the foreground. The only catch is that your Home screen app must never need an update, but you should be able to update the main app freely without the tab asking to set the home launcher.

Hope that makes sense..

How can I disable Android 4.0 home button?

Disabling the Home Button, many developers ask about such a feature!! but all I can say: you should absolutely not be disabling the home button in an Android application. This is a major anti-pattern, and will both make your app labelled as spammy and malware-like. Users hate when you disable their home button, and you should really avoid it at all costs. It's not against the law to do this , but your users will get pissed off and you will get a low ratings on google play for your app. Also This technique no longer works in Android 4.0, for obvious security reasons!!

How can I enable or disable the home button on Android?

By implementing Overided methods onAttachedToWindow() and onKeyDown() it's work fine.

@Override
    public void onAttachedToWindow() {
        super.onAttachedToWindow();
        MainActivity.this.getWindow().setType(WindowManager.LayoutParams.TYPE_KEYGUARD);           
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {

        if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_HOME) {
            Log.d("Home Button", "Clicked");
        }
        if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_BACK) {

            finish();
        } 
        return false;
    };

Without overriding onAttachedToWindow method KEYCODE_HOME doesn't work.

Note:Home key press is handled by the framework and is never delivered to applications.

This is a flaw in version <4.0 and is not working from ICS.

How to disable Home and other system buttons in Android?

First of, please think long and hard if you really want to disable the Home button or any other button for that matter (e.g. the Back button), this is not something that should be done (at least most of the times, this is a bad design). I can speak only for myself, but if I downloaded an app that doesn't let me do something like clicking an OS button, the next thing I do is uninstall that app and leave a very bad review. I also believe that your app will not be featured on the App Store.

Now...

Notice that MX Player is asking permission to draw on top of other applications:
Since you cannot override the Home button on Android device (at least no in the latest OS versions). MX Player draws itself on top of your launcher when you "lock" the app and clicks on the Home button.

To see an example of that is a bit more simple and straight forward to understand, you can see the Facebook Messenger App.

As I was asked to provide some more info about MX Player Status Bar and Navigation Bar "overriding", I'm editing my answer to include these topics too.

First thing first, MX Player is using Immersive Full-Screen Mode (DevBytes Video) on KitKat.

Android 4.4 (API Level 19) introduces a new SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_IMMERSIVE flag for setSystemUiVisibility() that lets your app go truly "full screen." This flag, when combined with the SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_HIDE_NAVIGATION and SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_FULLSCREEN flags, hides the navigation and status bars and lets your app capture all touch events on the screen.

When immersive full-screen mode is enabled, your activity continues to receive all touch events. The user can reveal the system bars with an inward swipe along the region where the system bars normally appear. This clears the SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_HIDE_NAVIGATION flag (and the SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_FULLSCREEN flag, if applied) so the system bars become visible. This also triggers your View.OnSystemUiVisibilityChangeListener, if set. However, if you'd like the system bars to automatically hide again after a few moments, you can instead use the SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_IMMERSIVE_STICKY flag. Note that the "sticky" version of the flag doesn't trigger any listeners, as system bars temporarily shown in this mode are in a transient state.

Second: Hiding the Status Bar

Third: Hiding the Navigation Bar

Please note that although using immersive full screen is only for KitKat, hiding the Status Bar and Navigation Bar is not only for KitKat.

I don't have much to say about the 2nd and 3rd, You get the idea I believe, it's a fast read in any case. Just make sure you pay close attention to View.OnSystemUiVisibilityChangeListener.

I added a Gist that explains what I meant, it's not complete and needs some fixing but you'll get the idea. https://gist.github.com/Epsiloni/8303531

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