Android App Lifecycle and Intents

Question

I'm having a bit of an issue with interaction beween my app and other apps on my phone, but I'm starting to think that maybe it's working as designed? Anyway, here's the problem.

My App, call it App A is a photo-manipulation app. So a user goes in, plays around to make changes and then uses the Share button to pass it on (SEND Intent). The photo is sent to another app, chosen from the Share menu, call it App B. This stand-alone app has its own menus, completely different look and feel, etc. The user does his thing in this app for a bit, then hits the home button and goes his way to do something else.

Sometime later, he decides he wants to run my app again. He goes into the launcher, hits the icon for App A (my app), and up pops App B. Very confusing. If he happens to remember that last time he ran App A, he used the share button to get into App B, maybe he'll think to use the back button, to get back into App A. If he doesn't remember, all he knows is that he is trying to use App A, but Android is giving him App B.

(I have one app on my phone that takes over the back button for its own use so you more-or-less get stuck in App B with no way out. Ugh. You hit the icon for App A and always end up in App B)

Is there any solution to this, or is it working as designed? None of my onCreate, OnResume, onStart, etc. methods get called when this is second-open is occurring, so I can't trap it. And realistically, I can see the desire for this behavior when timelines are short - i.e. hit the home button, quickly use some other tool, and then go back to what you were doing. But with a timeline any longer than a minute or two, it gets very confusing.

Anybody else dealing with this problem? Is there a basic Android architectural issue here? Is the SEND intent being mis-used by being accepted by stand-alone apps instead of small utilities?

Answer 1

I think you may use Intent flag 'FLAG_ACTIVITY_NO_HISTORY'. It means starting intent never goes into activity stack.