broadcastreceiver - Broadcast receiver for PACKAGE_ADDED not working from Android 3.1 onwards

Question

I am not able to launch my Broadcast receiver which is part of a STOPPED Application, I had registered for PACKAGE_ADDED event in the broadcast receiver, The application works properly till 3.0 but above 3.1 I am facing this issue. I used the below lines to send the intent.

    Intent intent = new Intent(MY_INTENT_ACTION);
    intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_INCLUDE_STOPPED_PACKAGES);
    sendBroadcast(intent);

Please let me know if I need to do anything more.

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Adding More Info:

My Intention is i wanted to listen for PACKAGE_ADDED Broadcast event and Perfrom some processing in my OnReceive, Please let me know if there is any possiblity to listen for this event with out launching application. A sample code to achive this would be helpful. Thanks

Answer 1

The docs for PACKAGE_ADDED state:

This is a protected intent that can only be sent by the system.

You can't modify it, or try to add flags to it. From the release notes for 3.1:

Note that the system adds FLAG_EXCLUDE_STOPPED_PACKAGES to all broadcast intents.

and from the docs for FLAG_EXCLUDE_STOPPED_PACKAGES

If set, this intent will not match any components in packages that are currently stopped. If this is not set, then the default behavior is to include such applications in the result.

All this means that your app won't work the same way as it used to. You'll have to make sure your app is started in order to receive PACKAGE_ADDED.