While screen sharing apps are useful for troubleshooting things remotely, they can be misused in various ways. One such instance could be access to your personal messages or SMS and your banking details/OTPs. Or you just don't want to accidentally share your Message screen. Banking frauds through screen sharing apps are also rampant in various countries.
Google Message on Android is taking a step against such screen sharing apps and block their access to Google Message app completely when a screen sharing apps is active. I spotted this change some days ago but there was no way to check how it works. Recently Google Message added a flag for this feature and I was able to test it.
I used Google Meet's screen sharing feature to test it and once I started sharing screen in a meeting and opened the Google Messages, it showed me warning with a popup - You're sharing your screen with someone - If you don't know this person, stop sharing immediately. Google has hidden your sensitive content for security. Here is a screenshot of the warning popup (it's not possible to do a screen recording while screen sharing is already active, so no video for this) -
This popup can not be dismissed while screen sharing is going on. You have to stop screen sharing to access Google Messages again. But this won't affect notifications which you recieve while screen sharing and the content will be visible. I tested this and scheduled a message to myself. I started screen sharing through Google Meet and the scheduled message came as notification and it opened the conversation screen when I tapped on the notification, totally defeating the purpose of restricting screen sharing.
So in its current state, Google Message will show the warning popup when you open it directly from your app drawer. I hope Google fixes the access of conversation screen through notification issue.
If you are a rooted user you can use GappsMod to enable the feature -
- Package Name - com.google.android.apps.messaging#com.google.android.apps.messaging
- Flag - bugle_phenotype__enable_screen_detection_checker
You can follow my channel Gapps Leaks & Flags on telegram for more such flags and Google Apps feature leaks.
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