How to make activity appear in "Choose file" dialog?

Question

Example: when you click a button to upload an image, you get the dialog to choose a file. Then you can select an app you want to choose it. How can I make my app appear in that dialog?

Answer 1

Add the following intent filters to your Activity where you want the picking to take place:

        <intent-filter >
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.PICK" />

            <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />

            <data android:scheme="file" />
        </intent-filter>
        <intent-filter >
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.GET_CONTENT" />

            <category android:name="android.intent.category.OPENABLE" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />

            <data android:mimeType="*/*" />
        </intent-filter>

The first one handles an Action Pick, and the second one Get Content.

You may want to change your mimeType to restrict selection a little. The one I provided will put your app in the selector for every type of file.

Answer 2

You need to add an Intent filter to your manifest file in the activity you want to handle the upload. For example: I have an Activity that handles image import, this is what I wrote.

activity android:name="com.ImportTheme">

    <intent-filter> 
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
        <data android:host="*" android:scheme="file" android:mimeType="image/*" />              
    </intent-filter>

</activity>

As you can see, you need to add mime type that suitable to what you looking for, at my example, I want only pictures - png, jpg etc.

Check in the next link, you have a list of mime types.

Answer 3

simple and complete example code (less than 50 lines) for app that android will present to the user along with menu list of compatible apps (polaris, browser, etc) when opening a TXT file.

disclaimer: in case user hasnt previously determined a default app

note: TXT may be changed for other extensions, always paying attention to mime types.