How can Android service take photos

Question

Can I take a picture from an IntentService in Android without displaying a preview surface to the user?

I have tried:

SurfaceView view = new SurfaceView(this);
c.setPreviewDisplay(view.getHolder());
c.startPreview();
c.takePicture(shutterCallback, rawPictureCallback, jpegPictureCallback);

But it doesn't work on my phone, Galaxy S2X

Thanks for your reply but can you elaborate a bit? I've seen several articles trying to allow services to take pictures but I haven't been able to get my phone Galaxy S2X to work with it. — user2712354, Oct 13 '14 at 01:08
You might find [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2386025/android-camera-without-preview/) question useful. — Andrew T., Oct 13 '14 at 01:49

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

You can record video without live preview, see e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/a/14997460/192373. You can force this recording to contain one frame if you wish. You can not capture a still photo without a View. Note that on some devices this restriction is not enforced, and in any case there are write a few known workarounds that make the live preview invisible to the end-user. Here you can find an answer how you can create a view from a background service.

How can Android service take photos

1 Answers1