Tag: Widget

How to add shortcut to Home screen in Android programmatically

I improved a little bit a solution that was found in StackOverflow. Now program saves in preferences whether a shortcut was already added and doesn’t add it in new launches of an app if user deleted it. This also saves a little bit time, since the code to add an existing shortcut doesn’t run anymore.

final static public String PREFS_NAME = "PREFS_NAME";
final static private String PREF_KEY_SHORTCUT_ADDED = "PREF_KEY_SHORTCUT_ADDED";


// Creates shortcut on Android widget screen
private void createShortcutIcon(){

    // Checking if ShortCut was already added
    SharedPreferences sharedPreferences = getPreferences(MODE_PRIVATE);
    boolean shortCutWasAlreadyAdded = sharedPreferences.getBoolean(PREF_KEY_SHORTCUT_ADDED, false);
    if (shortCutWasAlreadyAdded) return;

    Intent shortcutIntent = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), IntroActivity.class);
    shortcutIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
    shortcutIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);

    Intent addIntent = new Intent();
    addIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SHORTCUT_INTENT, shortcutIntent);
    addIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SHORTCUT_NAME, "YourAppName");
    addIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SHORTCUT_ICON_RESOURCE, Intent.ShortcutIconResource.fromContext(getApplicationContext(), R.drawable.ic_launcher));
    addIntent.setAction("com.android.launcher.action.INSTALL_SHORTCUT");
    getApplicationContext().sendBroadcast(addIntent);

    // Remembering that ShortCut was already added
    SharedPreferences.Editor editor = sharedPreferences.edit();
    editor.putBoolean(PREF_KEY_SHORTCUT_ADDED, true);
    editor.commit();
}

In Android Manifest:

May 27, 2014