Opening an email with multiple attachments, while restricting the chooser to ONLY email apps?

Question

What is the best way on Android to send an email with multiple attachments without having non-email apps in the chooser?

When sending emails, I used to do it like this:

final Intent sendEmailIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
sendEmailIntent.setType("message/rfc822");
sendEmailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL, new String[] { "test@test.com" });
...

Unfortunately, "message/rfc822" no longer works well for filtering out undesired apps from the chooser, such as Evernote, Drive, and various other apps.

I recently found this workaround that works for single attachments:

sendEmailIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SENDTO);
Uri data = Uri.parse("mailto:?to=test@test.com&subject...");
sendEmailIntent.setData(data);  
...

Unfortunately, this doesn't work for multiple attachments. I tried it, and it crashes Gmail. :S

Answer 1

I finally found a solution, albeit one that only works on Ice Cream Sandwich MR1 and above. The trick is to first build your intent using ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE:

sendEmailIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE);
sendEmailIntent.setType("message/rfc822");
sendEmailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL, new String[] { "some@email.com" });                
sendEmailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "Subject");
sendEmailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "Body");
final ArrayList<Uri> uris = /* ... Your code to build the attachments. */
sendEmailIntent.putParcelableArrayListExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uris);

To restrict it to email apps only, add this code:

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.ICE_CREAM_SANDWICH_MR1) {
    sendEmailIntent.setType(null); // If we're using a selector, then clear the type to null. I don't know why this is needed, but it doesn't work without it.
    final Intent restrictIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SENDTO);
    Uri data = Uri.parse("mailto:?to=some@email.com");
    restrictIntent.setData(data);
    sendEmailIntent.setSelector(restrictIntent);
}

When you fire this intent with startActivity(), you'll now only see email apps in the list, and if you select Gmail, the multiple attachments will be there.

I do this with a try/catch in case startActivity resolves to no activities, in which case I remove the selector, and it seems to work well.