Question

How do I automatically get/pick the first Application, that handles a specified Intent, as if the user selected the first option in a createChooser() dialog.

In this example choose between applications that send data like emails:

final Intent emailIntent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND);
SendEmailActivity.this.startActivity(Intent.createChooser(1, "Send mail..."));

Please help.

Answer 1

using the answer to this question you can get a list of all the apps with intent android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND

here’s a working example I coded below (ends up picking gmail on my device)

**Fair warning – will throw a NullPointerException if no email accounts have been setup
you should add a null check on the variable pkgAppsList and tell the user no email applications found or have been setup

    //set the main intent to ACTION_SEND for looking for applications that share information
    Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND, null);

    //intent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_LAUNCHER); //if you want extra filters

    //filter out apps that are able to send plain text
    intent.setType("plain/text");

    //get a list of apps that meet your criteria above
    List<ResolveInfo> pkgAppsList = this.getPackageManager().queryIntentActivities( intent, PackageManager.MATCH_DEFAULT_ONLY | PackageManager.GET_RESOLVED_FILTER);

    //select the first one in the list
    ResolveInfo info = pkgAppsList.get(0);      
    String packageName = info.activityInfo.packageName;
    String className = info.activityInfo.name;

    //set the intent to luanch that specific app
    intent.setClassName(packageName, className);

    //some samples on adding more then one email address
    String aEmailList[] = { "[e-mail]","[e-mail]" };
    String aEmailCCList[] = { "[e-mail]","[e-mail]"};
    String aEmailBCCList[] = { "[e-mail]" };

    //all the extras that will be passed to the email app       
    intent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL, aEmailList);
    intent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_CC, aEmailCCList);
    intent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_BCC, aEmailBCCList);
    intent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "My subject");
    intent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "My message body.");

    //start the app
    startActivity(intent);

if you want to whitelist what app is being called you can loop through the list checking each package name for a specific package (example: gmail is “com.google.android.gm”)