Share downloaded apps with second profile 4.2

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mentose457

Guest
Cool, I'll look into it tonight or this weekend if the kids are keeping me busy.

Family is much more important than this. Take your time.

Awesome idea.

Guest Account without my Gmail NOT attached but all my apps (that I would want available) would be great for when friends and family come over and want to mess with it! Right now I use App Protector but I prefer not to.

I don't have a family (insert forever alone meme here) but school takes up a lot o my time. That said tomorrow ill try and figure out how to disable some of google apps that require you to sing in to a google account.
 

jeepguy04

Member
Jun 8, 2006
48
47
A little more research and it appears that if you disable a system app on the second account then the line in the package-restriction.xml file changes from:

<pkg name="com.google.android.apps.maps enabled="1">

to:

<pkg name="com.google.android.apps.maps enabled="3">

This may be the key to enabling or disabling system apps without logging into second profile.

I manually changed some lines to enabled="3" and sure enough they were removed from the second profile.
 
M

mentose457

Guest
A little more research and it appears that if you disable a system app on the second account then the line in the package-restriction.xml file changes from:

<pkg name="com.google.android.apps.maps enabled="1">

to:

<pkg name="com.google.android.apps.maps enabled="3">

This may be the key to enabling or disabling system apps without logging into second profile.

I manually changed some lines to enabled="3" and sure enough they were removed from the second profile.

Nice find. I've been trying to disable the market without luck. I'll give this a try later. Thanks for your help figuring this out. I'll add the link to your app and thread to the OP latter too.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
 
M

mentose457

Guest
Setting enabled=3 for the play store does in fact disable it. Thanks!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
 

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    I just searched a way for sharing an installed app to my kids profile without google account and found the /data/system/users/##/package-restictions.xml file, too. I noticed if an app is installed in the profile, then there is no entry for this app in this file.

    So simply deleting the whole line, e.g.
    <pkg name="com.rovio.angrybirds" inst="false" />

    and rebooting works. The app is now installed :D
    1
    When I heard about multiple profiles in 4.2, I about shat a brick. "How cool! I don't share my Nexus 7 with my family members, but I could totally set up my tablet to have different types of interfaces for different situations! I could have one profile dedicated to operation within my car in landscape mode, and another profile for general use... hell, I could have a profile that creates a 'faux PC UI' so I can get some work done in KingSoft!"

    Nope. No app sharing. I can't help but feel that Google tacked this on as a last-minute thing--in fact, the whole of 4.2 feels very "last minute" since all they really added was **** that you could already get baked into other really popular ROMs like notification bar widgets. And even then, they only functioned as links to my settings (or, since I'm on the wonderfully buggy 4.2, the bluetooth button functioned as an annoyance that reminded me to restart my device if I wanted to turn bluetooth off). I've been pretty disappointed with Google lately: the Nexus Q went nowhere fast, the Nexus 4 launch was abysmal, 4.2 had some awful bugs and it detracted from the smoothness of the 4.1, and even 4.2.1 has its share of bugs.

    Well, thanks to this thread, I can at least get more out of my N7 in my car and in other situations that require me to have the tablet UI function slightly differently.
    1
    It would be quite easy to whip up an app that notified the user an app was installed and to make those modifications to the xml file (for rooted devices).

    Is that something people would be interested in?

    e.g. Install app, once installed, a notification window shows asking if you would like this app to be enabled for all users.

    Let me know, I could prob do this tonight (or on the weekend if I run out of time).
    1
    This method wouldn't work on android 5 +. Any changes to package restrictions xml file get reverted on reboot. Any alternative for android 5+.??