Password for installing app

MIT App Inventor Help
1

Hey there,
thanks for this amazing opportunity to produce easily apps. I really love this!!

I would like to protect my app by the need of a password for the installation. Is there a posipibility to implement this?

Thank you :slight_smile:
Didi

2

Hey,
do you think there is no posibility to solve this problem? an other solution would be, that I need to enter a password after opening the app for the first time and then save it. Is this possible and if so, how can I handle this?

Thanks :))

3

Hello Didi

There is nobody by the name of 'Hey' here, but I will try to help you. :grin:

It's actually a tricky subject. What you implement depends on certain factors and what the password is intended to do. You have, in your post, mentioned to different purposes:

  1. Installation Password. This implies you want to use passwords to prevent people copying the App.

  2. Personal Password. The Use set's their own password so that their private data cannot be read if someone else picks up their phone and runs the App.

I would say it's impossible to protect an App 100%, most especially against criminals that specialize in hacking into Apps, but you can protect an App quite well against casual abuse, such as in point (2). For point (1), solutions are difficult to implement, a lot depends on how the App is distributed and the number of people that use it.

So, looking at point(2), your App would present a 'set password' screen for the User to input their pass before continuing. Your App can take the password, optionally encrypt it (extension for that) and save to TinyDb. Next time the App is run, it will first check to see if a password has been saved in TinyDb and if it has, prompt the User for that pass and compare to the one stored. Most Apps warn the User that if the password is lost, their data cannot be recovered.

4

Hey ChrisWard,
thanks for your fast reply :slight_smile:

So I think i will drop idea (1).
I don´t really like to insert the passwort every time, so I tried the fingerprint extension made by Ken here in the forum. The only problem about this is the fact, that fingerprints that are "installed" after the app is already installed, are also permitted to open the app.

I´ll think about it but I guess I will continue with the fingerprint as verification because it´s very easy :slight_smile:#
Thanks a lot!

Didi