Detect USB tethering on android

Question

Is there any way to know (pro grammatically) in your Activity/Application that the user has enabled USB tethering on his phone?

Answer 1

Here is a solution to Listen for tethering state changes :

First you need to be familiar with BroadcastReceiver. you can find a lot of tutorial (google : how to listen for connectivity changes ...)

In order to get the Tethering state update, you need to use a hidden filter action of Android (see ConnectivityManager)

and in your BroadcastReceiver class :

IntentFilter filter = new IntentFilter("android.net.conn.TETHER_STATE_CHANGED");

then register the filter to your BroadcastReceiver :

myApplicationContext.registerReceiver(this, filter);

on your onReceive(final Context context,final Intent intent) method, the Intent.extras information contains 3 arrays filled with the corresponding tethered network interface : erroredArray / availableArray / activeArray

It's a little bit tricky but you can get the tethering status information.

In addition, you can do some reflexion on hidden function of Android code :

Search for getTetherableIfaces() in the Connectivity Manager.

Here is a link : https://github.com/android/platform_frameworks_base/blob/master/core/java/android/net/ConnectivityManager.java#L1604