Screenshot Sensor

The Screenshot Sensor is designed to capture real-time images of user interactions on the device. This sensor records screenshots that include all visual elements displayed on the screen at the moment of capture. For privacy considerations, the Screenshot Sensor is configured from the configurator end to include or exclude chosen applications. The generated figures will be stored in the phone directory: storage/self/primary/Download/aware-light/screenshot/FILES. The researcher has the option to store the images locally on users’ phones in the configurator.

Settings

  • Aware_Preferences.STATUS_SCREENSHOT: true or false to activate or deactivate the sensor.
  • Aware_Preferences.CAPTURE_TIME_INTERVAL: an integer indicating the time interval of capture in milliseconds
  • Aware_preferences.COMPRESS_RATE: an integer indicating the compression rate in percent, Compression rate for the screenshots (1-100). Compression rate refers to the ratio of the original data size to the compressed data size. For instance, a 20% compression rate indicates that the compressed image retains only 20% of the original resolution.
  • Aware_preferences.STATUS_SCREENSHOT_LOCAL_STORAGE: true or false to save figures to local album or not.
  • Aware_preferences.SCREENSHOT_PACKAGE_SPECIFICATION: a value specified to collect the data in inclusive applications, exclusive applications or default all applications. Value 0 means to only track data of the inclusive applications; value 1 means to only track data except the exclusive packages; value 2 means to collect data from all applications
  • Aware_preferences.SCREENSHOT_PACKAGE_NAMES: Package names for either inclusive or exclusive applications. The package names for the applications should be separated by a comma or space.

AWARE Broadcasts

  • ScreenShot.ACTION_SCREENSHOT_STATUS: to communicate the status of the screenshot operations, particularly to handle specific cases such as errors or retries within the screenshot service.
  • ScreenShot.ACTION_SCREENSHOT_SERVICE_STOPPED: to notify the application when the screenshot service has stopped, which is typically triggered in scenarios where the screenshot service terminates because of manual interruptions or system issues.

AWARE Providers

Screenshot.CONTENT_URI
content://com.aware.provider.screenshot/screenshot

The screenshot table logs the basic information of the captured screenshots.

Table field Field type Description
_id INTEGER primary key, auto incremented
timestamp REAL Unixtime milliseconds since 1970
device_id TEXT AWARE device UUID
package_name TEXT Application’s package name
application_name TEXT Application’s localized name
image_data LONGBLOB The screenshot image blob (edited)