How to disable Home and other system buttons in Android?

Question

I need to disable Home and other system buttons in my Android application.

Example: MX Player (see at Google Play) - you can press "lock" icon at player screen and it locks all hardware and software system buttons.

It works fine WITHOUT ROOTING.

I tested it on some devices with different Android versions. I tried to disassemble Kids Lock (plugin) but has no clue how it works yet.

I need same solution like the Kids Lock (plugin) for MX Player: - disable Home, Back and all other system buttons.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

First of, please think long and hard if you really want to disable the Home button or any other button for that matter (e.g. the Back button), this is not something that should be done (at least most of the times, this is a bad design). I can speak only for myself, but if I downloaded an app that doesn't let me do something like clicking an OS button, the next thing I do is uninstall that app and leave a very bad review. I also believe that your app will not be featured on the App Store.

Now...

Notice that MX Player is asking permission to draw on top of other applications:
Since you cannot override the Home button on Android device (at least no in the latest OS versions). MX Player draws itself on top of your launcher when you "lock" the app and clicks on the Home button.
To see an example of that is a bit more simple and straight forward to understand, you can see the Facebook Messenger App.

As I was asked to provide some more info about MX Player Status Bar and Navigation Bar "overriding", I'm editing my answer to include these topics too.

First thing first, MX Player is using Immersive Full-Screen Mode (DevBytes Video) on KitKat.
Android 4.4 (API Level 19) introduces a new SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_IMMERSIVE flag for setSystemUiVisibility() that lets your app go truly "full screen." This flag, when combined with the SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_HIDE_NAVIGATION and SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_FULLSCREEN flags, hides the navigation and status bars and lets your app capture all touch events on the screen.

When immersive full-screen mode is enabled, your activity continues to receive all touch events. The user can reveal the system bars with an inward swipe along the region where the system bars normally appear. This clears the SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_HIDE_NAVIGATION flag (and the SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_FULLSCREEN flag, if applied) so the system bars become visible. This also triggers your View.OnSystemUiVisibilityChangeListener, if set. However, if you'd like the system bars to automatically hide again after a few moments, you can instead use the SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_IMMERSIVE_STICKY flag. Note that the "sticky" version of the flag doesn't trigger any listeners, as system bars temporarily shown in this mode are in a transient state.

Second: Hiding the Status Bar
Third: Hiding the Navigation Bar
Please note that although using immersive full screen is only for KitKat, hiding the Status Bar and Navigation Bar is not only for KitKat.

I don't have much to say about the 2nd and 3rd, You get the idea I believe, it's a fast read in any case. Just make sure you pay close attention to View.OnSystemUiVisibilityChangeListener.

I added a Gist that explains what I meant, it's not complete and needs some fixing but you'll get the idea. https://gist.github.com/Epsiloni/8303531

Good luck implementing this, and have fun!