Question

I’m experimenting with some text to speech applications on android, where my app will speak a pre determined piece of text.

Is there a way I can have other applications use my functionality? For example, if I was using a browser, could I select some text and somehow pass that into an activity in my application?

Thanks

Answer 1

If you define proper intent filters and the third party apps launch intents with matching info, users will be given the option to use your app.

I use the following intent filter to make my URL shortening app available from many places in Android, including the share menus on YouTube, Browser, and Google Reader:

<intent-filter>
    <action
        android:name="android.intent.action.SEND"/>
    <category
        android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
    <data
        android:mimeType="text/plain"/>
</intent-filter>

More info available here.