How to Hide Apps in Android Kiosk mode

Kiosk mode is a lockdown mechanism that allows you to restrict your devices to a single app or a few selected applications of your choice. This ensures that no other apps or notifications on the device will distract the user while locked in kiosk mode.

If you want to allow users to access an app in the Android kiosk mode, but doesn’t want users tampering with it, you can add them as background apps. Background apps are not directly accessible from the kiosk home screen and it will stay hidden on the device, but an application locked in kiosk mode can invoke them. For instance, if the app that you have added in the kiosk mode requires the dialer app to make a call, add the dialer app as the background app. This will invoke the dialer app every time the user tries to make a call.

Hide an app in Android Kiosk mode

Associate a single app or multi-app kiosk policy with a device before applying the background app policy. The apps in the background app policy will not appear on the kiosk home screen and will stay hidden.

 
To configure the background app kiosk policy,

1. Login to your Hexnode portal.
2. Navigate to Policies.
3. Select the existing policy or click on New Policy to create a new one. If you are creating a new policy, provide a suitable name and description.
4. Select Background Apps from Kiosk Lockdown > Android Kiosk Lockdown.
5. Click Configure and click on +Add to select the app you want to hide and run in the background.
6. Click Done and save the policy.

You can add in-house, managed Google Play, system, store, or web apps from the local store (Hexnode repository), or you can directly browse and add the apps from the public store (Play Store) as background apps in kiosk.

Associate the policy with targets

If you have not saved the policy,

1. Navigate to Policy Targets.
2. Click on +Add Devices.
3. Select the required devices, device groups, users, user groups or domains with which the policy is to be associated.
4. Click on Okay and then Save to apply the policies to devices.

If the policy has been saved, you can associate it with another method,

1. Head on to “Policies”.
2. Check the policies to be associated.
3. Click on Manage > Associate Targets.
4. Go to Devices/Device Groups/Users/User Groups/Domains as per your requirement.
5. Select the required target entities.
6. Click on Associate to apply the policy to the devices.

Now when the device opens up, the app icon corresponding to the hidden app will not be shown on the kiosk home screen.