How do you make an Android “Home” shortcut bypass the app it's point to's history?

Question

I have an app that allows you to create Home \"shortcuts\" to a specific Activity. It turns out that some of my users will use the app, hit the home key to go do so

Answer 1

First, set up the taskAffinity in the Manifest to make the Activity run as a different "task":

then, when building the shortcut, set the FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK and FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP flags. Something like:

// build the shortcut's intents
final Intent shortcutIntent = new Intent();
shortcutIntent.setComponent(new ComponentName(this.getPackageName(), ".IncomingShortcutActivity"));
shortcutIntent.putExtra(EXTRA_STOPID, Integer.toString(this.stop_id));
shortcutIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
shortcutIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);
final Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SHORTCUT_INTENT, shortcutIntent);
// Sets the custom shortcut's title
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SHORTCUT_NAME, custom_title);
// Set the custom shortcut icon
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SHORTCUT_ICON_RESOURCE, Intent.ShortcutIconResource.fromContext(this, R.drawable.bus_stop_icon));
// add the shortcut
intent.setAction("com.android.launcher.action.INSTALL_SHORTCUT");
sendBroadcast(intent);