How to get a list of installed android applications and pick one to run

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\'v

Answer 1

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;
}