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I came across certain apps, where it requires user to press back twice within a short period, to exit the application.

Note, those apps, will show a toast message, to ask you to press twice explicitly to quit the app.

May I know, is there any particular reason to design the app in such way?

Cheok Yan Cheng
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    Probably many. Most of them are bad ones :) – matiash May 29 '14 at 02:08
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    An example of this is Astro File Manager. The reason it does it is the app allows 'walking' the directory structure and uses BACK to go back up the tree the way you came. Once you get to the top if you accidentally pressed BACK one time too many it would drop you out of the app. Instead it shows a `Toast` so you can confirm you really want to leave (or not). – Squonk May 29 '14 at 02:46
  • This question appears to be off-topic because it is about user experience, not a specific programming problem. It would be better on [ux.se]. – hichris123 Jun 04 '14 at 03:32

3 Answers3

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The reason why they do it is to keep you in their app the longest they can and to prevent you exit the app accidentally. Mainly it is to prevent you exit the app accidentally.

Emmanuel
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  • If that's the reason, that's a really bad design decision. – Cheok Yan Cheng May 29 '14 at 02:42
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    It is horrible design, but sometimes if there is a lot of back button pressing (i.e. in file management apps) it might make sense to the developer to add this behavior. – Emmanuel May 29 '14 at 02:45
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Sometimes apps use the back-button for a specific action in their app. And to prevent the user from "accidently" leaving the app, they require a "double click".

I've seen this mostly used by file managers and related apps, where the back button is used to go to the parent directory.

AlexS
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First off, you never "exit" an app in Android. Secondly, Android activities act as a stack. If the app launched a 2nd activity, hitting back will move back to the previous activity. This is expected behavior.

Gabe Sechan
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  • the key here I feel is "within a short period", many apps use a double tap on the back button instead of a confirmation dialog asking "are you sure you want to exit?" – panini May 29 '14 at 01:44
  • I have dozens of apps on my phone. Never seen that behavior on anything. I'd consider it horrible design to use it- there's no reason for a user to do that other than frustration with the back button not working. I find it far more likely he was in a second activity and had to walk back the stack. – Gabe Sechan May 29 '14 at 02:25
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    Yes, I'm not advocating the use of this pattern, however your answer isn't related to the OPs question. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. – panini May 29 '14 at 02:27
  • Quite frankly I don't think what you claim he saw is what he saw. I don't think that behavior is common. Instead I think he was in a subactivity. – Gabe Sechan May 29 '14 at 02:34
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    Quite frankly, [Its common enough to have questions about it on SO](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8430805/android-clicking-twice-the-back-button-to-exit-activity) – panini May 29 '14 at 02:35
  • @GabeSechan I had updated my question. – Cheok Yan Cheng May 29 '14 at 02:41
  • @GabeSechan See the app AndroZip. Ithink you can trust someone with 11k reputation, that he knows what he has seen and that he knows how to describe it. – AlexS May 29 '14 at 12:27