Is it possible to get another application's primary color like lollipop's recents view

android, android-5.0-lollipop

Solution

You can retrieve the launcher `Intent` for an application using `PackageManager.getLaunchIntentForPackage` and `PackageManager.getActivityInfo` will return the `ActivityInfo` for it.

Once you have that information you can create a new `Theme`, then use the resources from `PackageManager.getResourcesForApplication` to retrieve the attrs needed to find the `colorPrimary` value.

    try {
        final PackageManager pm = getPackageManager();

        // The package name of the app you want to receive resources from
        final String appPackageName = ...;
        // Retrieve the Resources from the app
        final Resources res = pm.getResourcesForApplication(appPackageName);
        // Create the attribute set used to get the colorPrimary color
        final int[] attrs = new int[] {
                /** AppCompat attr */
                res.getIdentifier("colorPrimary", "attr", appPackageName),
                /** Framework attr */
                android.R.attr.colorPrimary
        };

        // Create a new Theme and apply the style from the launcher Activity
        final Theme theme = res.newTheme();
        final ComponentName cn = pm.getLaunchIntentForPackage(appPackageName).getComponent();
        theme.applyStyle(pm.getActivityInfo(cn, 0).theme, false);

        // Obtain the colorPrimary color from the attrs
        TypedArray a = theme.obtainStyledAttributes(attrs);
        // Do something with the color
        final int colorPrimary = a.getColor(0, a.getColor(1, Color.WHITE));
        // Make sure you recycle the TypedArray
        a.recycle();
        a = null;
    } catch (final NameNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

One caveat is that the launcher `Activity` may not contain a `theme` attribute, in which case you may consider using `PackageManager.getApplicationInfo`, but there's no guarantee the `Application` tag contains a `theme` attribute as well.

Here are some examples:

Contacts

Play Music

Gmail

Problem

Original source

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