How to get List of all installed application from device

Hello Friends, We will see  how to  get list of all installed application from android device programmatically,

We call a method of PackageManager like

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

It returns a list of packageInfo object. Now we will strore our app list in ArrayList.

As shown below.

/**

 * 

 * @param context

 * @param getSysPackages

 * @return List of installed application from the device

 */

private ArrayList<PInfo> getApps(Context context, boolean getSysPackages) {

           final PackageManager pm = context.getPackageManager();

          ArrayList<PInfo> res = new ArrayList<PInfo>();

        

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

         for (int i = 0; i < packs.size(); i++) {

                PackageInfo p = packs.get(i);

                if ((!getSysPackages) && (p.versionName == null)) {

                     continue;

                }

         ApplicationInfo appinfo = p.applicationInfo;

         if(((appinfo.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM) != (getSysPackages   ? 1: ))))

                continue;

         if (pm.getLaunchIntentForPackage(p.packageName) == null) {

                 continue;

         }

         PInfo info = new PInfo();

         info.appname= p.applicationInfo.loadLabel(pm).toString();

         info.pname = p.packageName;

         info.icon = p.applicationInfo.loadIcon(pm);

        res.add(newInfo);

    }

    Collections.sort(res, new AlPhabeticalComparator());

    return res;

}

Now we have a list, we will just sort our array in alphabetical order using Java Collection API.
For that we require our custom comparator.

Create a Inner static class AlPhabeticalComarator

public static class AlPhabeticalComparator implements Comparator<PInfo> {

     @Override

     public int compare(PInfo info1, PInfo info2) {

          return info1.appname.toUpperCase().compareTo(info2.appname.toUpperCase());

     }

}

To store information of each application we require a Class Object Create as follows

Create a inner class as PInfo.

          /**
          * Static Inner class to hold application info
          **/
          public static class PInfo {                 public String appname = "";
                 public String pname = "";
                 public Drawable icon;
}