android intent chooser slow to appear

Question

When users have a lot of possible apps that can accept a certain kind of intent, the intentchooser takes a while to load, a noticeable amount of time at least

Yet this waiting happens after I launch intent, is there any way I can put up some kind of loading indicator or intermediary visual element to make time less noticeable to the user?

Shaynashayne

It shouldn't take long at all to query the system for available intents. Are you sure you're not doing any processing before launching the intent? Code example maybe? – Moule

@Moule I can confirm that it really is slow. Even with the most basic intent, all my apps and phones have taken long to load the list. – Altar

@Shaynashayne have you found a way to solve this? – Pinafore

I tried pre-resolving the chooser activity before calling startActivity (in order to show a progress bar during activity resolution if that was the holdup), but that didn't help. It appears the work is being done after the chooser activity is started. – Zacynthus

Answer 1

I added this to my manifest for the activity that uses the chooser:

<intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.CHOOSER" />
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
</intent-filter>

It seems to load faster now.

Hourihan

This changes the chooser values completely. – Mell