How to get a list of installed android application

Question

I asked a similar question to this earlier this week but I'm still not understanding how to get a list of all installed applications and then pick one to run.

I've tried:

Intent intent = new Intent(ACTION_MAIN);
intent.addCategory(CATEGORY_LAUNCHER);

and this only shows application that are preinstalled or can run the ACTION_MAIN Intent type.

I also know I can use PackageManager to get all the installed applications, but how do I use this to run a specific application?

Answer 1

I had a requirement to filter out the system apps which user do not really use(eg. "com.qualcomm.service", "update services", etc). Ultimately I added another condition to filter down the app list. I just checked whether the app has 'launcher intent'.

So, the resultant code looks like...

PackageManager pm = getPackageManager();
        List<ApplicationInfo> apps = pm.getInstalledApplications(PackageManager.GET_GIDS);

        for (ApplicationInfo app : apps) {
            if(pm.getLaunchIntentForPackage(app.packageName) != null) {
                // apps with launcher intent
                if((app.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_UPDATED_SYSTEM_APP) != 0) {
                    // updated system apps

                } else if ((app.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM) != 0) {
                    // system apps

                } else {
                    // user installed apps

                }
                appsList.add(app);
            }

        }

Answer 2

Clean solution that filter successfuly out system apps

The idea behind this solution is that the main activity of every system app does not have a custom activity icon. This method gives me an excellent result:

 public static Set<PackageInfo> getInstalledApps(Context ctx) {
    final PackageManager packageManager = ctx.getPackageManager();

    final List<PackageInfo> allInstalledPackages = packageManager.getInstalledPackages(PackageManager.GET_META_DATA);
    final Set<PackageInfo> filteredPackages = new HashSet();

    Drawable defaultActivityIcon = packageManager.getDefaultActivityIcon();

    for(PackageInfo each : allInstalledPackages) {
        if(ctx.getPackageName().equals(each.packageName)) {
            continue;  // skip own app
        }

        try {
            // add only apps with application icon
            Intent intentOfStartActivity = packageManager.getLaunchIntentForPackage(each.packageName);
            if(intentOfStartActivity == null)
                continue;

            Drawable applicationIcon = packageManager.getActivityIcon(intentOfStartActivity);
            if(applicationIcon != null && !defaultActivityIcon.equals(applicationIcon)) {
                filteredPackages.add(each);
            }
        } catch (PackageManager.NameNotFoundException e) {
            Log.i("MyTag", "Unknown package name " + each.packageName);
        }
    }

    return filteredPackages;
}

Answer 3

public static List<ApplicationInfo> getApplications(Context context) {
    return context.getPackageManager().getInstalledApplications(PackageManager.GET_META_DATA);
}

Answer 4

Another way to filter on system apps (works with the example above):

/**
 * Return whether the given PackgeInfo represents a system package or not.
 * User-installed packages (Market or otherwise) should not be denoted as
 * system packages.
 * 
 * @param pkgInfo
 * @return
 */
private boolean isSystemPackage(PackageInfo pkgInfo) {
    return ((pkgInfo.applicationInfo.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM) != 0);
}

Answer 5

Getting list of installed non-system apps

public static void installedApps()
{
    List<PackageInfo> packList = getPackageManager().getInstalledPackages(0);
    for (int i=0; i < packList.size(); i++)
    {
        PackageInfo packInfo = packList.get(i);
        if (  (packInfo.applicationInfo.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM) == 0)
        {
            String appName = packInfo.applicationInfo.loadLabel(getPackageManager()).toString();
            Log.e("App № " + Integer.toString(i), appName);
        }
    }
}

Answer 6

Get All the apps:

    PackageManager pm = getContext().getPackageManager();
    List<ApplicationInfo> apps = pm.getInstalledApplications(0);

Check if installed app then open:

if((app.flags & (ApplicationInfo.FLAG_UPDATED_SYSTEM_APP | ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM)) > 0) {
                String app_package = app.packageName;
Intent launchIntent = context.getPackageManager().getLaunchIntentForPackage(app_package);
context.startActivity(launchIntent);