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I developed a Android-Homescreen-Widget and got a weird problem: The "Open"-Button in the Market grayed out because there is actually no Application to launch. So, many people complain because they don't realize that my package is a widget. They even give me a bad rating and I want to avoid that by giving the people a hint what they should do. A first-line-hint in the description (written in Uppercase) didn't help at all, so I'm searching for a better solution.

Is it possible to display a message directly after the installation of a package in the android-market?

theomega
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2 Answers2

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The best solution I could find is to create a new Activity, and add an intent-filter like this:

        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.INFO" />
        </intent-filter>

This does not create a icon in the launcher but makes the Open-Button in the Market active and the Activity gets launched when clicked.

theomega
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  • Fantastic, now how do you test your app using android.intent.category.INFO *without* uploading it to Google Play? – Jose_GD Feb 18 '13 at 20:23
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    You can't as far as I know. I happen to change the category to `.LAUNCHER` which adds the icon again for testing. For releases I change the category back to `.INFO`. – theomega Feb 18 '13 at 22:27
  • This should work, if you want to start an application which doesn't show up in the app drawer: http://stackoverflow.com/a/4567928/1062480 – MrMaffen May 14 '15 at 13:55
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Apps like BeautifulWidget make an application that you can launch that just shows instructions on how to install the Widget. A waste of space, but some people out there really just don't understand widgets without hand holding.

Bryan Denny
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  • This is my temporary solution, but it creates a application-icon in the "launcher" which is totally useless. – theomega Nov 15 '10 at 16:23
  • @theomega I agree with you, but unfortunately I think it is the only solution at the current time. Some home launchers do let users hide certain launch icons (LauncherPro does this). – Bryan Denny Nov 15 '10 at 16:26
  • I'd say this is the easiest safest solution (as far as your market comments are concerned!) – fredley Nov 15 '10 at 16:49