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But to confirm the behaviour is as expected if you root a device you can set the device owner as per Google's previous instructions (adding a device_owner.xml) as I mentioned here

But to confirm the behaviour is as expected if you root a device you can set the device owner as per Google's previous instructions (adding a device_owner.xml) as I mentioned here

There are two ways to activate screen pinning:

Manually: Users can enable screen pinning in Settings > Security > Screen Pinning, and select the tasks they want to pin by touching the green pin icon in the recents screen.
Programmatically: To activate screen pinning programmatically, call startLockTask() from your app. If the requesting app is not a device owner, the user is prompted for confirmation. A device owner app can call the setLockTaskPackages() method to enable apps to be pinnable without the user confirmation step.

To deploy and activate a device owner, you must perform an NFC data transfer from a programming app to the device while the device is in its unprovisioned state.

There are two ways to activate screen pinning:

Manually: Users can enable screen pinning in Settings > Security > Screen Pinning, and select the tasks they want to pin by touching the green pin icon in the recents screen. Programmatically: To activate screen pinning programmatically, call startLockTask() from your app. If the requesting app is not a device owner, the user is prompted for confirmation. A device owner app can call the setLockTaskPackages() method to enable apps to be pinnable without the user confirmation step.

To deploy and activate a device owner, you must perform an NFC data transfer from a programming app to the device while the device is in its unprovisioned state.

Using NFC to do this seems a bit complex (what if a device does not have NFC?). I have not investigated this yet so if anyone can provide info how you go about setting the device owner by NFC?

But if you root a device you can set the device owner as per Google's previous instructions (adding a device_owner.xml) as I mentioned here

Using NFC to do this seems a bit complex (what if a device does not have NFC?). I have not investigated this yet so if anyone can provide info how you go about setting the device owner by NFC? Which now becomes the main point of your question. (i.e. setting the device owner on a non rooted device)

But to confirm the behaviour is as expected if you root a device you can set the device owner as per Google's previous instructions (adding a device_owner.xml) as I mentioned here