About this app
And-Lockdown is aimed at fairly technical users who wish to lock down android to a specific set of apps and apply other application restrictions such as URL black or white-lists in Chrome.
The app can be used by parents to create a locked down phone or profile for a child. Or it could be used for a secure kiosk application, though other apps seem to provide that functionality in a simpler way.
This app uses the Device Administrator permission. This is required in order to apply the restrictions listed above in a secure way that cannot be easily circumvented. Details on how to uninstall this app are below.
This app imposes various restrictions which are designed to ensure that the app cannot be circumvented. If any of these make you uneasy, you SHOULD NOT TRY THIS APP, or maybe wait until it has some reviews:
1. The phone/tablet must support multiple users. This can be enabled on some devices by using adb. If you don't know what adb is then this app may not be for you. The primary user is never locked down and can be used to create locked down users or to release the device ownership from the app, which you must do before uninstalling.
2. And-Lockdown must be made into a device owner in order to work. This takes some technical knowledge to enable. It gives the app permission to add the locked-down user profile and to apply other lock-downs such as disabling USB debugging since that could be used to break out of the locked down profile. The app does not do anything like wiping the device.
3. And-Lockdown becomes the profile owner of the created user profile. This is what lets it control application white-lists and restrictions.
4. There is a configuration file for each locked-down user. This allows for the application white-lists and restrictions to be changed after the user is first created. You must be able to provide a static website address (URL) for these files when creating the user. Dropbox works well for this. At present there is no way to alter the URLs after creating the user, but I hope to add that feature in future.
5. If you wish to uninstall the app, you currently have to delete any locked down users and then release the device ownership in the app. I expect to provide a way to do this in future that does not require deleting users.
Installation instructions
1. Install the app
2. Remove any additional users and accounts from the device (can be re-created after installation)
3. Enable Android debugging over USB (can be disabled after installation)
4. Connect to a computer
5. Approve the computer for debugging when prompted on the device (it might prompt after the next step)
6. On the computer, download the Android SDK platform tools from https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools.html.
7. On the computer, navigate to the platform tools folder and run command 'adb shell dpm set-device-owner com.adamsonapps.andlockdown/AndLockdown.DeviceAdmin'
8. Launch And-Locker and click 'Device Owner?' which will confirm if the app has been enabled successfully as a device owner.
9. Check that your device allows for additional users, which should show as 'Users' in the settings app. If it is not there, then use adb to add the following lines to the /system/build.prop file and restart:
fw.show_multiuserui=1
fw.max_users=3
You may need to do the above in a bootloader or by running adb root first. You should set the permissions on the file afterwards:
adb shell chmod 644 /system/build.prop
See https://xatom.nl/2014/07/26/edit-build-prop-using-adb.html for details
10. Create your controlled user by clicking on 'Create Locked User'. You may find the following adb command useful when putting in the settings URL:
adb shell input text 'https://someurl'
