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I wanted to access the developer options to enable adb access on Android 4.2 but cannot find it.

How can I enable that?

Once I've activated the menu, how can I hide it again?

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  • 1
    ...and any idea how to hide them again?
    – pelms
    Commented Nov 21, 2012 at 19:37
  • @pelms You should ask this in a new question.
    – Flow
    Commented Dec 9, 2012 at 11:53
  • @Flow: Is this really worth its own question? Besides this: Not sure you can do this, at least I haven't found a way to do so using the UI.
    – ce4
    Commented Dec 9, 2012 at 14:20
  • 2
    Since asking questions is free, yes. The voting process will then decide if it's a good question. And I would upvote such a question.
    – Flow
    Commented Dec 9, 2012 at 16:07

1 Answer 1

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Starting with Android 4.2. developer options are hidden by default to clean up the options menu. They're nice for debugging but some overlay options may be very alienating for average users when they're accidentially enabled.

On Android 4.2 and newer, Developer options is hidden by default. To make it available, go to Settings -> About phone and tap Build number seven times. Return to the previous screen to find Developer options.

You see a popup hat reads You are now a developer when it was successful.

Source: http://developer.android.com/tools/device.html

It's not possible to hide it again unless you're root and delete this file:

/data/data/com.android.settings/shared_prefs/development.xml

EDIT: According to this answer it's also possible to just delete the App data of the Settings app (com.android.settings, located at Settings->Apps->All->Settings->Clear data).

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  • Update: According to this answer it's possible to delete the settings app data (if you're willing to sacrifice other settings, of course)
    – ce4
    Commented Jan 22, 2013 at 21:42
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    Deleting the settings app data doesn't wipe your settings. To wipe all the settings, you'd need to wipe out the data from the "settings storage" app, though (on my GS3 anyway), it won't let you do that.
    – Compro01
    Commented Jan 22, 2013 at 21:54
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    A factory reset might do it? :P
    – t0mm13b
    Commented Jan 22, 2013 at 22:00
  • Sure, but that seems to be a 'little' overkill...
    – ce4
    Commented Jan 23, 2013 at 11:32
  • What else does deleting the settings app do? I'm surprised you can't tap the build number seven times to hide it or anything like that.
    – Anonymous Penguin
    Commented Jul 7, 2013 at 15:09

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