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Allow restricted settings on Android devices
What are restricted settings?
Downloading applications from sources other than the official app stores brings a lot of risk to Android devices. While many of these “sideloaded” apps may not cause much harm, there may be malicious apps that, when installed, gain access to device permissions that let them obtain sensitive information about the user.
To avoid such data vulnerabilities, Android 13 has introduced the ‘restricted Setting’ feature, which automatically denies the app permission to modify Accessibility, Notifications, and other device settings. So, when an app installed from a third-party source requests such permissions under Settings, a pop-up dialog appears stating, “Restricted setting. For your security, this setting is currently unavailable.”. The dialog includes an ‘OK’ button to close the message.
How to enable restricted settings for Hexnode UEM app?
The restricted setting feature becomes a roadblock for device enrollment in Hexnode when an Android 13+ device user is attempting to install the Hexnode UEM app using the APK file. During enrollment, when the end user enables the toggle to allow Notification access on the app permissions page of the Hexnode agent app, they get redirected to the app notifications page of Hexnode UEM in the Settings app. This is so that the user can enable the ‘Allow notification access’/’Allow notifications’ option from the page. But the option is found to be greyed out.
In such cases, where the restricted setting feature have to be disabled, Android offers an override method:
- Navigate to the Apps section of the Settings app and select the restricted app (in this case, Hexnode UEM).
- In the App info page of the Hexnode UEM app, tap on the three-dot icon in the top-right corner.
- Select the ‘Allow restricted settings’ option. The menu options for granting the necessary permissions become active again.
The ‘Allow restricted settings’ option may not appear on the app info page of Hexnode UEM for certain Android devices. To get the option accessible, the user needs to navigate to the app notifications page of Hexnode UEM and tap the greyed-out ‘Allow notification access’ setting. The ‘restricted setting’ dialog will pop up.
Click OK and revert to the App info page. The three-dot icon with the ‘Allow restricted settings’ option becomes visible. Once the option is enabled, the user is allowed to enable notification access on the app permissions page and continue the enrollment process.
