MrMC fails to start via FreeTime/Fire For Kids

[theoutrider]

Hi!

So I bought a Fire HD 7 the other week for my kid so we don't have to watch kids' TV on the TV constantly, and figured while I'm at it I might as well get them access to some of the kids' stuff I'm storing on my NAS.

The key thing here is that I'm trying to run MrMC through the FreeTime "Fire For Kids" launcher from a "children's profile" set up via Amazon's settings app. However, trying to run it from the kid's account, the screen goes black for a moment and then immediately returns to the launcher. Hooking up adb and looking at the log reveals this message:

Code: Select all

08-02 23:52:13.093   596  1842 I ActivityManager: START u10 {act=android.intent.action.MAIN cat=[android.intent.category.LAUNCHER] flg=0x10000000 pkg=tv.mrmc.mrmc cmp=tv.mrmc.mrmc/.Splash} from uid 1010115 on display 0
08-02 23:52:13.186   596  1842 E CustomStartingWindow: Name not found error: android.content.pm.PackageManager$NameNotFoundException: ComponentInfo{tv.mrmc.mrmc/tv.mrmc.mrmc.Splash}
08-02 23:52:13.244   596  1843 I ActivityManager: Start proc 5878:tv.mrmc.mrmc/u10a215 for activity tv.mrmc.mrmc/.Splash
08-02 23:52:13.725  5878  5878 E AndroidRuntime: Process: tv.mrmc.mrmc, PID: 5878
08-02 23:52:13.725  5878  5878 E AndroidRuntime: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{tv.mrmc.mrmc/tv.mrmc.mrmc.Splash}: java.lang.SecurityException: get application info: Neither user 1010215 nor current process has android.permission.INTERACT_ACROSS_USERS.
08-02 23:52:13.725  5878  5878 E AndroidRuntime:        at tv.mrmc.mrmc.Splash.onCreateSplash(Splash.java:828)
08-02 23:52:13.725  5878  5878 E AndroidRuntime:        at tv.mrmc.mrmc.Splash.onCreate(Splash.java)
08-02 23:52:14.358   596  1845 W ActivityManager:   Force finishing activity tv.mrmc.mrmc/.Splash
08-02 23:52:14.666   596  1286 I ActivityManager: Process tv.mrmc.mrmc (pid 5878) has died

Is INTERACT_ACROSS_USERS a permission I can somehow manually grant to MrMC? If it is not, could it be added to the manifest (do apps still have those on Amazon's Android fork?) so the app will work from the Fire For Kids launcher?


Thank you!

[Jibest]

I'm getting the same symptom on a kids Fire 7 tablet (9th generation).

I've 2 other kids Fire HD 8 (7th generation) that work fine.

[kryptonyte]

@amet

Any updates on this? Is there a fix on the horizon? I have some unhappy kids who cannot watch their videos...

As per the previous comments I also have two Amazon Kids Fire 10 (2019) that exhibits the same issue. MrMC launches for a second to a black screen and then crashes back to the Kids launcher.

I would enable a debug log within MrMC, but I cannot even launch the app to enable the setting. Hopefully @theoutrider 's adb logs will assit?

On our older two Kids Fire HD8 (2016) we do not have this problem and MrMC launches and works fine.

[amet]

@koying is/was looking at it, I’ll check with him

[koying]

Could you try to launch MrMC *only* from the Kid profile immediately after a reboot of the tablet?
I suspect that Freetime is using some Multi-user functionalities of android that MrMC does not support...

Re "INTERACT_ACROSS_USERS" specifically, that's a system permission not available to Apps, afaik, but that's only a symptom of the GUI trying to access a service launched by another user, I think.

[kryptonyte]

Hi Koying.

I tried restarting the device. The tablet auto boots into the kids profile. I tried clicking the MrMC icon immediately as it starts, but still see the same issue, flashes black for 1 second and then back to the kids dashboard. No avail unfortunately.

Out of interest, I had also previously whitelisted the MrMC app on the parents dashboard for each of the tablets here:

https://parents.amazon.com/

[kryptonyte]

I did some further testing last night.

I have installed the Google Play store and have successfully installed many games and apps from the store. I can launch all of these apps fine under the Kids profile (without the need to whitelist the apps in the Parent Portal - especially as some of these games are not available on Amazon App store so cannot be added to the whitelist).

I also tried installing Kodi from both the Play store and downloaded APK. Kodi exhibits the same issue as MrMC, launches to a black screen for 1 second and then goes back to Kids launcher/dashboard. I tried some older versions of Kodi and SPMC, with all exhibiting the same issue.

So the question is, what is different between MrMC & Kodi variants and other Google Play store games/apps that can launch successfully under the Kids profile - even without being whitelisted?