Android App activities installed as multiple icons

Question

My Android App has 2 activities. A login screen and a search screen. When I deploy the app on emulator or on my device, I see 2 icons for same app. When I click on icon 1 it

Answer 1

In your mainfest file when you have following tag in two different activities tags at the time, Android app seems to be installed twice.

<intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>    

Answer 2

The comment made by @Adrian C on his answer solved our problem.

The manifest file of our main application had only one intent-filter tag specifying only one activity as the launcher activity for the application.

So I had to look deeper...

We included library projects (luckily written by us) and the manifest file of one of the library projects had an intent-filter tag on its activity specifying that activity as the launcher activity.

When we then included that library project in our main application (which has its own intent-filter specifying a launcher activity), the complete source code saw two intent-filter tags specifying two activities as launcher activities and therefore two application icons were created.

When we removed the intent-filter specifying a launcher activity in the library project, the second app launcher icon disappeared.

Answer 3

Your manifest file should only have this line in the activity you want to have an icon:

<category android:name="android.intent.category.MAIN" />

Based on your description, it sounds like both activities have this line.