How to get the list of apps that have been installed by a user on an Android device?

Question

I am using the following piece of code at the moment:

List<PackageInfo> packs = getPackageManager().getInstalledPackages(0);

but it returns Apps that have been installed by the both device manufacturer and me. How to limit it so that only the apps that I installed are returned?

Answer 1

// Flags: See below
int flags = PackageManager.GET_META_DATA | 
            PackageManager.GET_SHARED_LIBRARY_FILES |     
            PackageManager.GET_UNINSTALLED_PACKAGES;

PackageManager pm = getPackageManager();
List<ApplicationInfo> applications = pm.getInstalledApplications(flags);
for (ApplicationInfo appInfo : applications) {
    if ((appInfo.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM) == 1) {
        // System application
    } else {
        // Installed by user
    }
}

Flags:

• GET_META_DATA
• GET_SHARED_LIBRARY_FILES
• GET_UNINSTALLED_PACKAGES

Answer 2

Zelimir's answer is correct. But in some cases it won't give you all the installed third-party applications. ApplicationInfo also has flag FLAG_UPDATED_SYSTEM_APP which is set

If this application has been install as an update to a built-in system application

On my smart phone such applications include Amazone Kindle, Adobe Reader, Slacker Radio and others. These applications did not come with the phone and were installed from Google Play Store. Thus, they can be considered as third-party apps.

So, you may also want to check FLAG_UPDATED_SYSTEM_APP flag.

final PackageManager packageManager = _context.getPackageManager();
List<ApplicationInfo> installedApplications = 
    packageManager.getInstalledApplications(PackageManager.GET_META_DATA);

for (ApplicationInfo appInfo : installedApplications)
{
    if ((appInfo.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM) != 0)
    {
        // IS A SYSTEM APP
    }

    if ((appInfo.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_UPDATED_SYSTEM_APP) != 0)
    {
        // APP WAS INSTALL AS AN UPDATE TO A BUILD-IN SYSTEM APP
    }
}

Answer 3

If I do pkgAppsList.get(0), it returns an ResolveInfo Object. How do I get information such as the icon, and packageName?

Just do this:

ResolveInfo info = pkgAppsList.get(0);
ApplicationInfo appInfo = info.activityInfo.applicationInfo;

PackageManager packageManager = = getPackageManager();
//And then you retrieve all needed data:
Drawable packageIcon = packageManager.getApplicationIcon(applicationInfo); //Icon
String packageName = applicationInfo.packageName; //Package name
String packageLabel = String.valueOf(packageManager.getApplicationLabel(applicationInfo)) //Package label(app name)

Answer 4

Nikolai's answer is correct, but could be optimized using an iterator. This is what I came up with:

/**
 * Return list of installed user applications
 */
static List<ApplicationInfo> getUserInstalledApplications(Context context) {
    // Get installed applications
    final PackageManager packageManager = context.getPackageManager();
    List<ApplicationInfo> installedApplications =
            packageManager.getInstalledApplications(PackageManager.GET_META_DATA);

    // Remove system apps
    Iterator<ApplicationInfo> it = installedApplications.iterator();
    while (it.hasNext()) {
        ApplicationInfo appInfo = it.next();
        if ((appInfo.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM) != 0) {
            it.remove();
        }
    }

    // Return installed applications
    return installedApplications;
}

Answer 5

final Intent mainIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN, null);
mainIntent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_LAUNCHER);
final List pkgAppsList = context.getPackageManager().queryIntentActivities( mainIntent, 0);

Answer 6

Answering this for android 11/API 30

context.getPackageManager().getInstalledApplications(PackageManager.GET_META_DATA); The above code returns the list of system apps as user apps are not visible by default, you need to add below permission in the manifest to get list of user apps

<uses-permission android:name"android.permission.QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES">

Answer 7

In case you want to know how to do this in Kotlin it is shown below though as mentioned previously by Ketan sangle you will need to add <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES" tools:ignore="QueryAllPackagesPermission"/> in your AndroidManifest.xml file.

val packages = packageManager.getInstalledApplications(PackageManager.GET_META_DATA)

for (packageInfo in packages) {
            if (packageInfo.flags and ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM != 1) {
                 //enter what you want to do here
            }
        }

In this case I used the system flag to exclude system apps and you can find other flags here

Answer 8

user

1. pkgAppsList.get(i).activityInfo.packageName to fetch packageName
2. pkgAppsList.get(i).activityInfo.applicationInfo.loadLabel(getPackageManager()).toString() to fetch app level name

Answer 9

Android PackageManager class is used to retrieve information on the application packages that are currently installed on the device. You can get an instance of PackageManager class by calling getPackageManager(). PackageManager provides methods for querying and manipulating installed packages and related permissions, etc. In this Android example, we we get list of installed apps in Android.

PackageManager packageManager = getPackageManager(); List list = packageManager.getInstalledApplications(PackageManager.GET_META_DATA)

packageManager.getInstalledApplications() return a List of all application packages that are installed on the device. If we set the flag GET_UNINSTALLED_PACKAGES has been set, a list of all applications including those deleted with DONT_DELETE_DATA (partially installed apps with data directory) will be returned.

Full info here.

Another good read here.

Answer 10

There is a very useful library Called AndroidUtils, which will help to get it just write one line code.

Ref: https://github.com/xihadulislam/androidUtils

val installApplications : List<ApplicationInfo> = ApplicationUtil.getInstallApplications(context)