Permanently Disable Camerais an app for Android 5.0 or later that disables the camera(s) on your Androidphone or tablet. Unlike other camera-disabling apps(Cameraless, Camera Block, etc.), this app lets you disable the camera in a way that cannot be reversed,not even by you. It requires some manual setup steps, described below.
See the FAQ for more information.
After you install the app and go through its steps to disable the camera, you’llneed to go through a number of additional manual steps to make it permanent.
You’ll need:
- An Android phone or tablet running Android 5.0 (Lollipop) or later.
- A computer where you can install the Android developer tools.
- A USB cable to plug your Android device into your computer.
There are two ways to install the app:
- Visit the Google Play Store listingfor the app and install it from there.
- If you can’t install the app from the Play Store, you can instead click thisdirect download link todirectly download the app as an APK file. You will likely need to change yoursettings to allow apps from untrusted sources. Seethis articlefor instructions on how to do that.
Once the app is installed, follow the on-screen steps:
- Tap the “Grant device admin permission” button. The Android system will showan “Activate device administrator?” screen, and you should tap “Activate”.
- Tap the “Disable camera” button. This uses the granted permissions to disablethe camera.
At this point, the camera on your device will be disabled for all apps. However,you are still able to re-enable the camera by revoking the permissions yougranted and uninstalling the app. If you want to “freeze” the app to permanentlydisable the camera, then continue with these instructions.
Note that after following the full instructions, the app will also apply twodevice policies that stop you from creating new users on the device orperforming a factory reset from the settings menu. Both of these policies areneeded to ensure that the cameras cannot be re-enabled.
This configures your Android device to allow you to send commands to it.
In the Settings app:
- Enable the “Developer options” menu (if you haven’t done so) by going to the“About phone” (or “About tablet”) menu, scrolling to the bottom, and tapping“Build number” 7 times. A message will appear saying that you are now adeveloper.
- In the “Developer options” menu, go to the “USB debugging” option and enableit.
See this YouTube video for anexample. You may also be able to search the internet for help if you run intoany trouble.
Android Debug Bridge (ADB) is a utility included in the Android developer toolsthat allows you to send commands to your Android device, and you’ll need it to“freeze” the app so that it cannot be uninstalled.
The full way to install ADB is to install theAndroid SDK, then open “Android SDK Manager”and install “Android SDK Platform-tools”. That should install the adb commandthat you can run from a command line.
There are also alternative ways that may be simpler, like in these explanations:
When ADB is set up, plug your Android device into your computer and run theadb devices command from a command line. If everything was successful, you’llsee something like this:
$ adb devicesList of devices attachedWS6X7581AMdeviceIf adb devices gives an error, then then it wasn’t installed successfully. Ifit just shows “List of devices attached” without anything below it, then makesure USB debugging from step 2 is enabled and that your device is connected.
Installing ADB is a common task, so if you run into trouble you should be ableto find help on the internet.
4. Temporarily remove all accounts from your Android device
Now that ADB is set up, you’ll use it to set the Permanently Disable Camera appas a “device owner” so it can’t be uninstalled. But doing so requires that yourAndroid device not have any accounts associated with it (most notably Googleaccounts, but also other accounts like Facebook and Twitter that are registeredas accounts on the device), so you’ll need to remove them for now.
In the Settings app, go to the “Accounts” menu. For each account, tap the menubutton in the top right and tap “Remove account”. It will display a warning thatall messages, contacts, and other data will be deleted from the device. This isgenerally not a big deal; any messages, contacts, etc will be re-added when youadd the accounts back in the last step, so in typical situations you won’t loseany data. You may want to write down which accounts you removed so you can addthem back in the last step.
Also, if you have other users on the device (e.g. a guest user), you need toremove them as well. To remove the guest user, you can switch to the guest userusing the user menu, then when you go back to the user menu there will be a“Remove guest” button. Seethis YouTube video for an exampleof how to manage users.
Once the device no longer has any accounts or secondary users, you can move tothe next step.
5. “Freeze” the app so it cannot be uninstalled
This is the point of no return.
Run the following command to set the app as a “device owner” so that it cannotbe uninstalled:
adb shell dpm set-device-owner com.disablecamera/.AdminReceiverYou should see a message saying “Success: Device owner set to packagecom.disablecamera”.
Go back to the Permanently Disable Camera app. It may prompt you to disable thecamera again, in which case you should do so. Then, you should see a messagesaying that the camera is permanently disabled. Once you see this message, theapp will also restrict your permissions so that you may not add other users andso that you may not use the settings option to factory reset the device (sinceboth of these could be used to re-enable the camera).
If you try to uninstall the app, it will direct you to the device administratorspage, which will not let you revoke permissions for the Permanently DisableCamera app.
6. Add back all accounts to your Android device
Go back to the Settings app, and go to the “Accounts” menu. For each accountthat you removed, tap “Add account” and add back. All of your emails, messages,etc should be added back when the account syncs.
That’s it! If you’ve followed the steps correctly, your Android device should bejust like before, but without a working camera. If you run into any problems,you may want to see the FAQ for more info.
