Android Screen Pinning Programmatically No Device Owner

Question

I'm fairly new to Android and the changes in DeviceOwner/Screen Pinning over the last 3 versions are confusing me a bit.

I can make an app lock as long as I set the device owner with an EMM or adb commands.

It looks like you used to be able to start screen pinning (not Kiosk or Single App Mode - just regular screen pinning) programmatically with setLockTaskEnabled() without being Device Owner. But I can't find documentation on that anywhere. All the documentation seems to point to ONLY locking the screen programmatically if you are under one of the 2 (3 if rooted) Device Owner methods.

Can anyone tell me if it's possible to start screen pinning programmatically and how? Or point me in the right direction?

Thanks

Answer 1

Ugh.

I just had to read one more API doc:

You can still call startLockTask() (note different than the one I was trying to call).

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-5.0.html#ScreenPinning

Not sure that the documentation is as clear as it could be with all this - or the naming conventions but there we are.