Prevent status bar for appearing android (modified)

Question

I am implementing a kiosk mode application and i have successfully made the application full-screen without status bar appearance post 4.3 but unable to hide status bar in 4.3 and 4.4 as status-bar appears when we swipe down at the top of the screen.

I have tried to make it full screen by

• speciflying the full screen theme in manifest
• setting window Flags ie setFlags
• setSystemUiVisibility

Possible duplicate but no concrete solution found

Permanently hide Android Status Bar

Finally the thing i want is, how to hide status bar permanently in an activity?? in android 4.3,4.4,5,6versions

Answer 1

We could not prevent the status appearing in full screen mode in kitkat devices, so made a hack which still suits the requirement ie block the status bar from expanding.

For that to work, the app was not made full screen. We put a overlay over status bar and consumed all input events. It prevented the status from expanding.

note:

• customViewGroup is custom class which extends any layout(frame,relative layout etc) and consumes touch event.
• to consume touch event override the onInterceptTouchEvent method of the view group and return true

Updated

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

customViewGroup implementation

Code :

WindowManager manager = ((WindowManager) getApplicationContext()
            .getSystemService(Context.WINDOW_SERVICE));

WindowManager.LayoutParams localLayoutParams = new WindowManager.LayoutParams();
localLayoutParams.type = WindowManager.LayoutParams.TYPE_SYSTEM_ERROR;
localLayoutParams.gravity = Gravity.TOP;
localLayoutParams.flags = WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_FOCUSABLE|

            // this is to enable the notification to recieve touch events
            WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_TOUCH_MODAL |

            // Draws over status bar
            WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_LAYOUT_IN_SCREEN;

    localLayoutParams.width = WindowManager.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT;
    localLayoutParams.height = (int) (50 * getResources()
            .getDisplayMetrics().scaledDensity);
    localLayoutParams.format = PixelFormat.TRANSPARENT;

    customViewGroup view = new customViewGroup(this);

    manager.addView(view, localLayoutParams);