Question

I am trying to prevent an AlertDialog box from closing when pressing the back button in Android. I have followed both of the popular methods in this thread, and with System.out.println I can see that in both cases the code executes. However, the back button still closes the dialog box.

What could I be doing wrong? Ultimately I’m trying to prevent the back button closing a dialog box – it is a disclaimer that is displayed the first time the app is run and I don’t want the user to have any option but to press the “Accept” button in order for the app to continue.

Answer 1

Simply use the setCancelable() feature:

AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
builder.setCancelable(false);

This prevents the back button from closing the dialog, but leaves the “negative” button intact if you chose to use it.

---

While any user that does not want to accept your terms of service can push the home button, in light of Squonk’s comment, here two more ways to prevent them from “backing out” of the user agreement. One is a simple “Refuse” button and the other overrides the back button in the dialog:

builder.setNegativeButton("Refuse", new OnClickListener() {
           @Override
           public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
               finish();
           }
       })
       .setOnKeyListener(new OnKeyListener() {
           @Override
           public boolean onKey(DialogInterface dialog, int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {
               if(keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_BACK && event.getAction() == KeyEvent.ACTION_UP)
                   finish();
               return false;
           }
       });