How to prevent Screen Capture in Android

Question

I'm going to say that it is not possible to completely prevent screen/video capture of any android app through supported means. But if you only want to block it for normal android devices, the SECURE FLAG is substantial.

1) The secure flag does block both normal screenshot and video capture.

Also documentation at this link says that

Window flag: treat the content of the window as secure, preventing it from appearing in screenshots or from being viewed on non-secure displays.

Above solution will surely prevent applications from capturing Video of your app

See the answer here.

2) There are alternative means of capturing screen content.

It may be possible to capture the screen of another app on a rooted device or through using the SDK,

which both offer little to no chance of you either blocking it or receiving notification of it.

For example: there exists software to mirror your phone screen to your computer via the SDK and so screen capture software could be used there, undiscoverable by your app.

See the answer here.

getWindow().setFlags(LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE, LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE);

Just add this line:

getWindow().setFlags(LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE, LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE);

Before your setContentView() method.

To disable Screen Capture:

Add following line of code in onCreate() method:

getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE,
                           WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE);

To enable Screen Capture:

Find for LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE and remove the line of code.

I saw all of the answers which are appropriate only for a single activity but there is my solution which will block screenshot for all of the activities without adding any code to the activity. First of all make an Custom Application class and add a registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks.Then register it in your manifest.

MyApplicationContext.class

public class MyApplicationContext extends Application {
    private  Context context;
    public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();
        context = getApplicationContext();
        setupActivityListener();
    }

    private void setupActivityListener() {
        registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks(new ActivityLifecycleCallbacks() {
            @Override
            public void onActivityCreated(Activity activity, Bundle savedInstanceState) {
                activity.getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE, WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE);            }
            @Override
            public void onActivityStarted(Activity activity) {
            }
            @Override
            public void onActivityResumed(Activity activity) {

            }
            @Override
            public void onActivityPaused(Activity activity) {

            }
            @Override
            public void onActivityStopped(Activity activity) {
            }
            @Override
            public void onActivitySaveInstanceState(Activity activity, Bundle outState) {
            }
            @Override
            public void onActivityDestroyed(Activity activity) {
            }
        });
    }



}

Manifest

 <application
        android:name=".MyApplicationContext"
        android:allowBackup="true"
        android:icon="@mipmap/ic_launcher"
        android:label="@string/app_name"
        android:roundIcon="@mipmap/ic_launcher_round"
        android:supportsRtl="true"
        android:theme="@style/AppTheme">

For Java users write this line above your setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE, WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE);

For kotlin users

window.setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE, WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_SECURE)

You can make your app as device/profile owner and call setScreenCaptureDisabled(). From the docs, this api does the following:

public void setScreenCaptureDisabled (ComponentName admin, boolean disabled) Added in API level 21

Called by a device/profile owner to set whether the screen capture is disabled. Disabling screen capture also prevents the content from being shown on display devices that do not have a secure video output. See FLAG_SECURE for more details about secure surfaces and secure displays.

The calling device admin must be a device or profile owner. If it is not, a security exception will be thrown. Parameters admin Which DeviceAdminReceiver this request is associated with. disabled Whether screen capture is disabled or not.

Alternatively you can become an MDM(Mobile Device Management) partner app.OEMs provides additional APIs to their MDM partner apps to control the device.For example samsung provides api to control screen recording on the device to their MDM partners.

Currently this is the only way you can enforce screen capture restrictions.