How Launcher decides which app icon to place in launcher?

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17760016

  •  03-06-2022
  •  | 
  •  

Question

I have a very naive question. I've written a program which lists down all the installed applications in my Android OS [I've got total 339 in my case]. But in the Launcher [In my case TouchWiz Home] only 148 application Icons are shown.

My Question is: How does the launcher[TouchWiz Home] decide which app icon to show or not in Launcher?

Was it helpful?

Solution

Launcher will show those activities that have the following intent filters declared in the app's manifest file

 <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
    </intent-filter>

OTHER TIPS

When a developer publishes an app, he/she can decide if app has "launcher" icon(set a launcher intent in manifest file which is embedded in the APK).

Other apps maybe services or other kind of apps that has no launching behavior.

Licensed under: CC-BY-SA with attribution
Not affiliated with StackOverflow
scroll top