Question

I have a simple Android application that operates on some text data. The app is invoked two ways: 1) launching the app from the launcher and entering the text data manually, or 2) using the SEND intent to share some text with it.

When launched through the launcher, everything behaves as I expect. When launched through the Share feature and subsequently using the app switcher/recent apps button, the application appears as “Android System” and disappears if I switch away from it. I’d like it to appear in that list like any other app and persist when switched away from. So the question is: why does my app behave differently when launched from the different intents? I’m sure there’s some fundamental thing I’m not understanding about Intents, Activities and Tasks, but I can’t determine where even to look.

Here’s the relevant section of the manifest.

<application
    android:allowBackup="true"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
    android:label="@string/app_name"
    android:theme="@style/AppTheme" >
    <activity
        android:name="com.example.stub2.Main"
        android:label="@string/app_name" >
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
        </intent-filter>
        <intent-filter>
          <action android:name="android.intent.action.SEND" />
          <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
          <data android:mimeType="text/plain" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>
</application>

Answer 1

For example the user calls your activity Main with ACTION_SEND along with some text abc. Another time, he calls Main with text zzz. Then you will have 2 instances of Main in recent list, with different intents.

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Edit

You can register ACTION_SEND with an “adapter” activity like AdapterActivity, then forward the text to Main. By this way, your app (Main activity) will be only listed in recent apps if the user starts it from the launcher.

<activity
    android:name="AdapterActivity"
    android:excludeFromRecents="true" />

There are more activity tags here.