What’s the best way to obscure apps in the app drawer?
What’s the best way to obscure apps in the app drawer?
For security reasons, I have a few apps that I don’t want people to be able to easily click on if they have my phone. There’s the hide apps option, but it’s not too difficult to go to Menu/Visibility/Only Hidden and then see a screen comprised entirely of things I don’t want them to access.
Here’s a use case of what I want to prevent: Someone has my phone and knows enough to get to the App Drawer and launch Facebook to write a joke status under my name, but they don’t know enough to launch Facebook via Google Now. If they can’t find it in the App Drawer (and assume they would find the visibility option), they’ll think it’s not installed.
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D5 Creation
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You can change the icon and the label, so it won’t look like facebook anymore. You could also set the transparency to 0, so they are not hidden, but still not visible.
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Run a script on that iconș the script can disable the click action, the icon, the label, etc
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Just don’t even add a shortcut to “All apps”. Honestly. Just a folder with favorite apps. To access app drawer, just assign it to i.e. a swipe gesture to anything on the desktop. Or two-finger-swipe etc. Quickly to open for those who know.
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You can also add a lock for specific apps (like a pattern, etc), there are plenty of apps like this on the playstore
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One can still access the add shortcut/app menu to add the Facebook to the desktop
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Bogdan Tautu Not if he locks the desktop 😀
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Lutz Linke I can still add items and enter edit mode even if the desktop is locked, what is the lock supposed to do?
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Lukas, your suggestions were exactly what I was looking for. Something that allows everything to look normal, but obscures the apps. (A much simpler solution than what I was looking for). I decided to still set them to hidden, but remove the icon and text, so it looks like there are no hidden apps. Thanks! And thanks to everyone else for your suggestions. That was very fast.
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A lock like this for exemple http://www.xda-developers.com/lock-down-any-app-with-lockdown-pro/
better screenshots here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2679305
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Benoît de Chezelles I would not recommend any Lock app, which doesn’t use root (or xposed). The reason is: the only way such apps can know if a locked app is being launched is having a background service running which checks for the currently active app constantly. So they will use a lot of RAM permanently and thus kill your battery. (correct me if I’m wrong)
Additionally if you know what you’re doing you can prevent their startup and with that the lock.
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Bogdan Tautu basically adds one more tap to edit. Unless I miss something. Doesn’t LOCK, as I consider lock to be.
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Lukas Morawietz
yes that’s true, I was just giving a kind of idea ! not specificaly this app (that doesn’t use root).
I remember I saw a lock like this in the module list of xposed…. I can’t find it now…
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Benoît de Chezelles You’ll find serveral options with a quick google search.
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