Easy way to hide system bar on Android ICS

Question

I will give my ICS tablets for users to complete a survey so I would like the user to work with my app only. They should not be able to switch to the home screen, press back buttons etc., so I would like to hide the system bar completely.

My tablet is rooted and I know some application like this can help me, but I don't need all the extra functions of this app.

I found this tutorial that could help me, but if I can add the code to do my own, it would be great.

Answer 1

After a lot of searching on the internet, I managed to get the System Bar to hide and appear in a 4.2 device using:

To Hide:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("service call activity 42 s16 com.android.systemui");

Or use 79 instead of 42 for API less than 14. You may also need to include the SET_DEBUG_APP permission, in which case you need to have the application signed with the system key or installed in the /system/app/ directory.

To Show:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("am startservice --user 0 -n com.android.systemui/.SystemUIService");

Alternatively some people have used the -a (instead of -n) option, though this was causing an error on my device:

Error: Not found; no service started.

For Android 4.4, there is a new feature called immersive mode which hides both the system and status bars. The system UI is toggled by the user through the use of an edge swipe from the top or bottom of the screen. For more details take a look at:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.html#setSystemUiVisibility(int)

Using new IMMERSIVE mode in android kitkat

For example:

getWindow().getDecorView().setSystemUiVisibility(
          View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LAYOUT_STABLE
        | View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LAYOUT_HIDE_NAVIGATION
        | View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LAYOUT_FULLSCREEN
        | View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_HIDE_NAVIGATION
        | View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_FULLSCREEN
        | View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_IMMERSIVE)