How to Programmatically Enable/Disable Accessibility Service in Android

android service accessibility
Abilash picture Abilash · Apr 8, 2012 · Viewed 52.4k times · Source

I would like to programmatically enable/disable Accessibility Services listed under Settings->Accessibility option.

I could start Accessibility Intent like below:

Intent intent = new Intent(android.provider.Settings.ACTION_ACCESSIBILITY_SETTINGS);
startActivityForResult(intent, 0);

But I don't have any idea on how to enable the services listed in the view through my code.

Please, provide me your views.

Answer

Kevin picture Kevin · Jan 29, 2015

I found a solution worked for me by calling

Settings.Secure.putString(getContentResolver(), 
    Settings.Secure.ENABLED_ACCESSIBILITY_SERVICES, "pkgname/classname");
Settings.Secure.putString(getContentResolver(), 
    Settings.Secure.ACCESSIBILITY_ENABLED, "1");

Where the pkgname is your package name and the classname is the class name of your accessibility service.

If you need to enable several services or you don't want to destory the previous settings you might want to use : to seperate other services.

Also you might need to run as a system application and you might need the following permissions

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_SETTINGS" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS" />

However, according to @Rupert Rawnsley this might not work on some versions of Android, I am working on Android 4.0.4 and hope it works for you.

PS. If it doesn't work, maybe you could find some luck in /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db/secure, that's where Android stores secure settings.

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