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I would like to disable all my home keys for a specified event. Lets say my daughter is playing a game, she is 3.5 years old so she does not have very good coordination when it comes to not touching one of those keys accidentally.

Is there a known app that (through whatever means) disables home keys, and through some other means enables them again.

I define home keys as:

Home, Back, Menu, Search

Being on an HTC evo, the home keys are "part of the screen" which is what makes it annoying.

Side note: What tags should I use? No idea what is appropriate for this question.

Dmitriy Likhten
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1 Answers1

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This is a common problem with parents giving their phones for children to play with. See my answer here for some related information.

Essentially, it's a security problem. If I take away your right to use the back button (or more importantly, the home button), then you can't quit my app and therefore I have hi-jacked your phone.

Therefore, the only way you are going to get around this is if there some method to do this with a rooted phone. Or if an application/game supports some sort of "kid lock" that might not be foolproof. Developers can override the back/menu/search button intents, but I don't think they can override the home button unless it is a home launcher app.

Take a quick look at this search on the Android market. There are some games specifically tailored to this problem that you might find interesting.

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Bryan Denny
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  • Security wise, it makes perfect sense, but it makes sense also if asking permissions to hijack the phone (for Good, not Evil). Would be interesting if a Root App existed to do this. – Dmitriy Likhten Oct 04 '10 at 19:57
  • I guess it would be a nice addition to android if we had an ability to make some sort of lock. Like say press power 4 times to unlock. TBH, this is annoying to even me, when playing a game. The Samsung Galaxy S3's hard button helps a lot if games disable menu or back though. – Dmitriy Likhten Nov 13 '12 at 15:37