Kiosk: Configure Android "Kiosk Lockdown"

[kevinpapst]

This thread is here to talk about the Android app Kiosk Lockdown which is available at https://www.android-kiosk.com/

It can be used to read NFC tags, see https://help.android-kiosk.com/en/article/kb-nfc-il2sf0/

[T9C5F]

Maybe this will help someone:

Web NFC does not work in Android Kiosk / Kiosk Browser Lockdown. The NFC button on the Kimai Kiosk page behaves incorrectly because, while Web NFC is technically implemented in Android WebView, it's not possible to grant the required NFC permission.

However, this isn't actually a problem (and that's the part I didn't get at first), because Kimai explicitly uses the Kiosk Browser Lockdown JavaScript NFC API.

It's important to note that only NDEF tags with URL or text records are supported, and the content of the tag is used - unlike Web NFC, which reads the tag's UID regardless of its content.

My Allnet tablet initially types the tag UID into the input field via the keyboard, but that input is ignored: Since the Kiosk NFC callback overwrites the field with the tag content and immediately submits it after a successful read, everything works for my use case.

Also worth mentioning: In Settings → Hardware → NFC, there's an option labeled as being "urls only" (also noted in the documentation), but that's not entirely accurate. If this option is not enabled, the JavaScript-based NFC feature won't work at all - even for text tags. So it's essential to enable it.

[kevinpapst]

Thanks for your input 👍

[kevinpapst]

The best working implementation is a standard Chrome, but this obviously has no Kiosk capabilities and therefor is not a good choice for most use-cases. But if you use a mobile Phone, you should see the regular permission checks.

I have tried a few other Kiosk apps, most did not support NFC (last time I checked) or had weird quirks.
Most of them ship their own Javascript extension, which is hard to keep in sync.
I am happy to test other apps if you have better ones in mind.
And I have also started to work on a better NFC page, which does not use an input field.