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My Android App has 2 activities. A login screen and a search screen. When I deploy the app on emulator or on my device, I see 2 icons for same app. When I click on icon 1 it opens screen 1 (login screen) and When I click on icon 2 it opens screen 2 (search screen). By logic when I login it should show the search screen. Not sure when I'm making the mistake.

Cœur
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3 Answers3

92

Your manifest file should only have this line in the activity you want to have an icon:

<category android:name="android.intent.category.MAIN" />

Based on your description, it sounds like both activities have this line.

Aaron C
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    `MAIN` is not a category; it is an action. More generally, do not include an `` for an activity in the manifest unless you need one. For simple apps, only the activity that needs an icon in the launcher should have an ``. – CommonsWare Aug 20 '10 at 00:30
  • Hi Aaron, Thank you so much for the quick revert. Yes this was the issue and the app works as intended. Thanks again. Regards, Aravind. C –  Aug 20 '10 at 00:40
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    You should check also the manifest for referenced library projects – Adrian C. Mar 07 '13 at 18:59
  • Thanks for the little detail. – Samir Jul 26 '17 at 07:46
27

In your mainfest file when you have following tag in two different activities tags at the time, Android app seems to be installed twice.

<intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
Marek Sebera
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Megha
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    I've got same problem because I included a library as project dependency, whose AndroidManifest.xml contained an intent filter definition -> I removed it and everything started working correctly! – notsoux Mar 27 '14 at 19:01
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    Actually, I have this in two different activities, because I want each to behave as an independent app. It works as desired. I tried with "CREATE_SHORTCUT", but the shortcut does not stays in the home screen. – Luis A. Florit Sep 03 '14 at 00:41
5

The comment made by @Adrian C on his answer solved our problem.

The manifest file of our main application had only one intent-filter tag specifying only one activity as the launcher activity for the application.

So I had to look deeper...

We included library projects (luckily written by us) and the manifest file of one of the library projects had an intent-filter tag on its activity specifying that activity as the launcher activity.

When we then included that library project in our main application (which has its own intent-filter specifying a launcher activity), the complete source code saw two intent-filter tags specifying two activities as launcher activities and therefore two application icons were created.

When we removed the intent-filter specifying a launcher activity in the library project, the second app launcher icon disappeared.

marienke
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