enable/disable packages programmatically

Question

How can I enable/disable a whole package programmatically from a Android System application?

In this post, a component is enabled/disabled programmatically, but not a whole package.

I want to achieve the same result that is achieved by the root command pm disable/enable package_name (from the adb shell -> su).

You could try running the same command programatically. It would obviously only work on a rooted device. — Steve Smith, Mar 30 '17 at 11:03
Why do you need a rooted device? You would just need a system privileged application. — Chef Pharaoh, Aug 16 '17 at 19:47

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 14 '19 at 10:21

Two ways you can do this:

Using pm disable command:

Runtime runtime = Runtime.getRuntime();
runtime.exec("pm disable "+packageName);

Using PackageManager api:

public abstract void setApplicationEnabledSetting (String packageName, 
                                                   int newState, int flags)

Where, in newState param you can pass "COMPONENT_ENABLED_STATE_DISABLED" to disable the app & "COMPONENT_ENABLED_STATE_ENABLED" to enable the app.

1 Answers1