Kid app "Useless Notification"

[Michael Wareman]

I built a test app (to test removing the persistent notification on kid app exit with 'Disable') - and another issue presented itself.

On the first run of a new kid app - I get a "Useless Notification" - with my Kid app icon and name. It says "Tap to disable. you don't need these".

How can I build the app so that this does NOT occur on the kid app?  I have *NO* need for notifications at all in the Kid - I just don't want them at all. How?

[Somesh]

It is actually a limitation set by Android OS. If you really don't want them still, set your Target API to lower than 26 while exporting.

[Michael Wareman]

Yeah - but if you do that you cannot distribute via the Play store.

Also - since when does Android require ALL apps to display a notification? There are a ton of apps that don't display persistent notifications when they are running. It's absolutely incorrect to suggest that *all* apps are required to display a notification. This is ONLY a requirement for apps that need to stay running in the background.  I'm building a Kid app that I do NOT want to stay running. So - no notification at all needed.

I need a way to suppress this altogether - and accept that Android may kill the process. That's fine - because I will have done all I can to kill the tasks anyway - as well as disabling the profile that's used to report WiFi connection state (while the app is running only).

[Brenden M]

An example that should clarify this issue for you:

An SMS app has permissions and activities used on device that Tasker doesn't create. Tasker isn't possibly used to create what you call a subset of the set of "any apps" at all.

SMS apps have Android OS-deep "SMS permissions" and Android OS has the activities, processes, and profiles for listening to the cell tower and relaying the message to the SMS app. (It's like Android has the active profile, and like the SMS app specifies the task of alerting you with a notification.

Tasker and kid apps work by using profiles and monitor services, right? An App doing so is why Android OS requires the persistent notification. I can disable my kid app on my device (on internal test on Play Store), my notification disappears, and when I relaunch the app, the service and little icon pop back up.

SMS apps rely on other intents and listeners which are already built into Android.

Here's the issue: Tasker is really sophisticated and suited to imaginative experimentation, but is not built simply as an app building environment to do what you ask here. You couldn't make a fully fledged SMS app with Tasker, even if you could rightly almost get there with enough tasks and profiles.

Perhaps... The icon could disappear and the notification could still be visible when pulled down?

[Somesh]

Whether you want it or not, even after you destroy all you scenes, your app will work in the background. And it also has a monitor service similar to that of tasker so that the app can also achieve functionality like as in tasker.