Getting a Package Name from an Application Label (Display Name)

This is the first of several posts I’ve begun writing about an open source machine learning utility app for Android. Stay tuned!

I’ve been looking around for a way to launch apps using their display names (officially, the “Application Label”). It seems like a pretty straightforward thing to want to do, and I see plenty of apps that do it, but for some reason, everyone is playing their cards close to their chest (which is annoying, and part of why I wrote this post). So without further ado, a simple method that takes an application label (perhaps from user input?) and launches the desired app:

PackageManager pm = context.getPackageManager();
List<ApplicationInfo> l = pm.getInstalledApplications(PackageManager.GET_META_DATA);
String canonicalName = “”;
for (ApplicationInfo ai : l){
String n = (String)pm.getApplicationLabel(ai);
if (n.contains(name) || name.contains(n)){
canonicalName = ai.packageName;
}
}

//do whatever you want with canonicalName, e.g. launch the app,
Intent app = context.getPackageManager().getLaunchIntentForPackage(canonicalName);
context.startActivity(app);

And there you have it! Share, enjoy, comment.