How to Hide Developer Options on Android Devices

Android is an open source operating system for handheld devices that provides a better and more open environment for developers and common users. Google provides Android users with a dedicated SDK that contains various types of tool-kits for developers. ADB and Fastboot are among the most known tools that every Android user uses regularly or in special situations like fixing an issue or installing stock firmware.

Android encourages developers and users to engage in development activities. And therefore, all Android devices come with Developer Options built in. You can find the developer options under your device settings. Developer options are useful in various development activities, such as:

• Enable debugging over USB connection to flash images and kernels.
• Capture bug reports onto the device.
• Show CPU usage on screen.
• Draw debugging information on screen such as layout bounds, updates on GPU and hardware layers, and other information.
• Options to simulate app stresses or enable debugging options.

Among various geeky options found under Developer options, USB Debugging is the most used option. Once enabled on your device, this option prepares your device to communicate with your computer and allow it to write data on itself.

If you wish to install stock firmware, root your device, unlock bootloader or flash factory images or kernels, you will have to enable USB Debugging on your device to activate the debug bridge between the device and your computer. The Developer options could easily be found on any Android device running Android 4.1 or lesser versions. However, Android 4.2 onward the Developer options disappeared from device settings. Making the option visible has now been made a little tricky. We would not talk about that in detail here as we already have a comprehensive tutorial on the topic:

How to Enable Developer Options on Android 4.2/ 4.3 and Android 4.4 KitKat

I have really no idea as to why anyone would wish to hide the Developer options after enabling it. I personally recommend that every user should alway keep USB Debugging enable on his/her device whether he/she uses it or not. Suppose your device in caught in a bootloop for some reason and you have to flash stock firmware to fix it. You won�t be able to enable USB Debugging, without which you�ll not be able to install the firmware successfully. To avoid such situations, keeping USB Debugging enable all the time is a must-do thing.

Hide Developer Options on Android

Anyway, if you are still interested in hiding or disabling Developer options on your Android device, we have come up with a few tips to make the option invisible again.

Method 1:

1. Open Settings on your device.
2. Scroll to Apps/Applications and tap it.
3. Then swipe the screen from right to left till you see the list of ALL apps.
4. Find the Settings app and open it.
5. Now tap the Clear data button.
6. Now go back to Settings. Developer options should not be visible there any more.

Method 2:

I tried method 1 on Samsung devices too but the Clear Data option was not executable there at all. If you own a Samsung device and are desperate to get rid of Developer option driven by some freak of mind, you will have take some more pain to do that. Following the method described below will wipe all data and installed apps on your device. Doing this will not delete any data stored on the internal SD card. It�ll work on all Android phones and tablets.

If you are ready to pay that price, see below:

1. Open device Settings.
2. Tap on More/General tab (for Samsung users only).
3. Open Backup and reset.
4. Uncheck Backup my data option.
5. Tap Factory data reset.
6. Select Reset device and confirm when prompted.
7. You device will reboot when factory reset is done.
8. When the device boots up, open Settings>More/General. Developer options should be hidden now!