How to get an Android Device Nickname

A Comparison of the Top 5 Methods on Popular Android Devices

Background

On most Android devices, users have the option to set a custom device nickname to make it easier for them to identity their device. When showing a user a list of their devices, we want their custom device name to be displayed instead of the factory default value if it’s available.

Research

I searched the web and found several different methods to read the user specified device nickname on Android:

1. Settings.System.getString(getContentResolver(), “bluetooth_name”);
2. Settings.Secure.getString(getContentResolver(), “bluetooth_name”);
3. BluetoothAdapter.getDefaultAdapter().getName();
4. Settings.System.getString(getContentResolver(), “device_name”);
5. Settings.Secure.getString(getContentResolver(), “lock_screen_owner_info”);

Note: #3 requires Bluetooth permission.

Sources:

• Stack Overflow — How do you get the user defined “Device Name” in android?
• Stack Overflow — How to fetch Device Name (NOT Build.MODEL) from Android programmatically?
• Xamarin Forums — Device Name — Not make, model or manufacturer. But the user assigned name of the device.

Results

But how do they perform on various popular Android devices? The # columns in the table below refer to the methods used to access the device nickname referenced in the ‘Research’ section above. A green check indicates that we were able to successfully read the user’s custom device nickname.

Conclusion

There is no standardized Android API to read the user specified device nickname and not all Android devices support a custom nickname. There are ways to read this data but none work on all Android devices.

Although we didn’t find a consistent way to access the user specified device nickname, there are libraries available like AndroidDeviceNames that can provide a more readable device name than the factory set value (e.g. “sailfish”). For example, it can provide “Samsung S8+” which a user is more likely to recognize than the codename “dream2qltecan” or model number “SM-G955W”.

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