How do I programmatically “restart” an Android app?

Question

Firstly, I know that one should not really kill/restart an application on Android. In my use case, I want to factory-reset my application in a specific case where a server s

Answer 1

Here is an example to restart your app in a generic way by using the PackageManager:

Intent i = getBaseContext().getPackageManager()
             .getLaunchIntentForPackage( getBaseContext().getPackageName() );
i.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);
startActivity(i);

Answer 2

Use:

navigateUpTo(new Intent(this, MainActivity.class));

It works starting from API level 16 (4.1), I believe.

Answer 3

You can restart your current activity like this:

Fragment :

activity?.recreate()

Activity :

recreate()

Answer 4

The application I'm working on has to give the user the possibility to choose which fragments to display (fragments are dynamically changed at run-time). The best solution for me was to restart completely the application.

So I tried plenty of solutions and none of them has worked for me, but this:

final Intent mStartActivity = new Intent(SettingsActivity.this, Splash.class);
final int mPendingIntentId = 123456;
final PendingIntent mPendingIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(SettingsActivity.this, mPendingIntentId, mStartActivity,
                    PendingIntent.FLAG_CANCEL_CURRENT);
final AlarmManager mgr = (AlarmManager) SettingsActivity.this.getSystemService(Context.ALARM_SERVICE);
mgr.set(AlarmManager.RTC, System.currentTimeMillis() + 100, mPendingIntent);
this.finishAffinity(); //notice here
Runtime.getRuntime().exit(0); //notice here

Hoping that is going to help someone else!

Answer 5

I have slightly modified Ilya_Gazman answer to use new APIs (IntentCompat is deprecated starting API 26). Runtime.getRuntime().exit(0) seems to be better than System.exit(0).

 public static void triggerRebirth(Context context) {
    PackageManager packageManager = context.getPackageManager();
    Intent intent = packageManager.getLaunchIntentForPackage(context.getPackageName());
    ComponentName componentName = intent.getComponent();
    Intent mainIntent = Intent.makeRestartActivityTask(componentName);
    context.startActivity(mainIntent);
    Runtime.getRuntime().exit(0);
}

Answer 6

The only code that did not trigger "Your app has closed unexpectedly" is as follows. It's also non-deprecated code that doesn't require an external library. It also doesn't require a timer.

public static void triggerRebirth(Context context, Class myClass) {
    Intent intent = new Intent(context, myClass);
    intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TASK);
    context.startActivity(intent);
    Runtime.getRuntime().exit(0);
}