How to prevent a user from disabling my device admin app, through the settings menu?

Question

I'm working on an MDM (Mobile Device Management) app for android, but I have a huge problem and it's that the user can disable my app from within settings>security>device administrators. The only thing I can do about it, is display a warning message by overriding the onDisableRequested(...) method in my DeviceAdminReceiver sub-class, but I really want to prevent the user from disabling my admin app altogether.

I've tried to override the onReceive(...) method, so that nothing happens when the actions ACTION_DEVICE_ADMIN_DISABLE_REQUESTED and ACTION_DEVICE_ADMIN_DISABLED are broadcasted by the system, but so far it has not worked. Apparently some other component is processing those actions before they arrive to my onReceive(...) method and I dont know why. I would like to be able to show my own custom dialog indicating that the user can´t disable the administrator app from this section, and maybe even ask the user to set an admin password to do it.

public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
        String action = intent.getAction();
        if (ACTION_PASSWORD_CHANGED.equals(action)) {
            onPasswordChanged(context, intent);
        } else if (ACTION_PASSWORD_FAILED.equals(action)) {
            onPasswordFailed(context, intent);
        } else if (ACTION_PASSWORD_SUCCEEDED.equals(action)) {
            onPasswordSucceeded(context, intent);
        } else if (ACTION_DEVICE_ADMIN_ENABLED.equals(action)) {
            onEnabled(context, intent);
        } else if (ACTION_DEVICE_ADMIN_DISABLE_REQUESTED.equals(action)) {

        } else if (ACTION_DEVICE_ADMIN_DISABLED.equals(action)) {

        } else if (ACTION_PASSWORD_EXPIRING.equals(action)) {
            onPasswordExpiring(context, intent);
        }
    }  

I need help to solve this issue.

Thanks,

Answer 1

You can do this from Android 5 Lollipop with the new device-owner mode. Then the Device-Administrator option in greyed-out and the user cannot disable it, thus not uninstall the device-admin App.

However note that installing a device-owner App is not easy, it has to be done at provision-time with NFC, or from a computer with adb (handy for testing but not for deployment), or with a MDM what is your case...