Sensors off

When in airplane mode, devices can still access some sensors to enable specific functionality, such as screen rotation and taking pictures. Android 10 provides a developer options setting to shut off all sensors in a device. This feature helps developers test their app’s functionality in situations where those sensors become unavailable, and also gives users a way to control the sensors in their device.

When a developer or user enables Sensors off in developer options (Settings > System > Developer options > Quick settings developer tiles), a new tile appears in the quick settings tray. They can use the tile to prevent apps from accessing the camera, microphone, and all sensors managed by the SensorManager class.

Warning: This option only affects apps that access the sensors through `SensorService`, `CameraService`, and `AudioPolicyService`. Telephony functions do not use `AudioPolicyService` and still have access to the microphone during phone calls.

Implementation

Android 10 includes a reference implementation that handles the camera, microphone, and SensorManager sensors. The system service that manages the Sensors off state and notifies clients of state changes is located in frameworks/base/services/core/java/com/android/server/SensorPrivacyService.java. The manager that facilitates access to SensorPrivacyService within an application’s context is located in frameworks/base/core/java/android/hardware/SensorPrivacyManager.java.

Common issues

When implementing this feature, sometimes camera apps don't respond properly to the onError callbacks, both when first attempting to acquire the camera and when the camera is no longer available. This typically results in the app crashing when this tile is enabled, but this can be used as a signal to indicate that the feature is behaving as expected.

This behavior indicates that the app isn't properly handling the onError callback in CameraDevice.StateCallback. When Sensors off is enabled, the onError callback is invoked with CameraDevice.StateCallback.ERROR_CAMERA_DISABLED set as the error value. Update any first-party apps to handle the onError callback with this value by not making any subsequent calls against CameraDevice until a subsequent openCamera call is successful.

Sensor behavior

When Sensors off is enabled, the sensors stop reporting any data to the system or apps. An app can still request a sensor and register a listener when Sensors off is enabled, but either silence is returned for the mic or the onSensorChanged callback is never invoked for the sensors. As soon as the tile is disabled, those same listeners start to receive the actual output from the mic or the expected callbacks to onSensorChanged without needing to do any additional work. The default behavior of silenced sensors is as follows.

Camera

If an app is using the camera when Sensors off is enabled, an error is sent to the onError callback method and CameraDevice is closed.

If an app attempts to access the camera when Sensors off is enabled, an error is sent to the onError callback method.

Microphone

When Sensors off is enabled, access to the microphone is still possible but only silence is returned. If an app is using the microphone when Sensors off is enabled, no error is generated, but the recording is silenced and just returns an array of zeros. If Sensors off is disabled while the app is still using the microphone, the expected audio data is returned.

If an app attempts to access the microphone when Sensors off is enabled, the microphone returns silence.

Sensor

When an app tries to access other sensors when Sensors off is enabled, the sensor type influences the default behavior:

Continuous sensors: Sensors in this reporting mode stop dispatching events. If an app is interacting with a continuous sensor when Sensors off is enabled, the sensor sends no additional data to the app until the feature is disabled.
Flush events: A sensor flush can be requested when the tile is enabled and the onFlushComplete callback is invoked to indicate that the requested flush completed successfully, but no new events with sensor data are generated and returned to the onSensorChanged callback.
On-change events: When Sensors off is enabled, no new change events are reported.
Trigger events: When Sensors off is enabled, trigger events stop generating. Any existing events complete.

Customization

If your devices use the default implementation of SensorService, CameraService, and AudioPolicyService, then no additional customization is needed to the reference design. However, you can support sensors managed outside of SensorManager, remove Sensors off from your devices, or change the System UI for the developer quick settings tiles or the icon for the Sensors off tile.

Support more sensors

If your devices contain sensors managed outside of SensorManager, you should add support for them using SensorPrivacyService and SensorPrivacyManager.

When the Sensors off tile is toggled, SensorPrivacyService invokes a one-way callback for all registered listeners. When this callback is received, the registered listener can take the necessary steps based on the state of the tile. If it's enabled, all existing connections can be terminated and return empty data, and a flag set to prevent new connections. If it's disabled, the flag can be reset to allow new connections. Using the camera service (platform/frameworks/av/services/camera/libcameraservice/) as an example, follow these steps to add support for a new sensor.

Implement the BnSensorPrivacyListener interface. For more details, see SensorPrivacyPolicy in CameraService.h.
Register with the SensorPrivacyManager and obtain the state of the tile on startup. For more details, see SensorPrivacyPolicy::registerSelf in CameraService.cpp.
Handle Sensors off state changes in the callback. For more details, see SensorPrivacyPolicy::onSensorPrivacyChanged and CameraService::blockAllClients in CameraService.cpp.
Prevent access to the sensor data when the tile is enabled. For more details, see the sensor privacy policy check in CameraService::validateClientPermissionsLocked in CameraService.cpp.

Remove Sensors off

As a developer tool for testing, Sensors off is hidden because a user must first enable developer mode, then choose to make the tile available in settings.

If you don't want to support Sensors off on your devices, remove the service tag from packages/apps/Settings/AndroidManifest.xml. If you remove the service tag, the Sensors off tile won't be available to enable from the developer quick settings tiles page.

Change the Sensors off UI

There are two elements that can be customized for the Sensors off UI: the icon displayed for the developer quick settings tile and the icon displayed in the status bar when the tile is enabled. To customize the look of these icons, replace these files:

Quick settings tile icon: packages/apps/Settings/res/drawable/tile_icon_sensors_off.xml
Status bar icon: frameworks/base/packages/SystemUI/res/drawable/stat_sys_sensors_off.xml

Validation

As an optional developer tool, there are no CTS tests for this feature.

You can test manually by installing an app from Google Play that reads and displays all of the device's sensors. When you enable the Sensors off tile, ensure that none of the values for the sensors change, the microphone audio is silent, and the camera isn't accessible.