Make activity appear in the 'wallpaper chooser'

Question

I want my activity to appear in the list of activities (gallery. live wallpapers, etc) that you see when you try to choose a wallpaper from the home screen.

Im assuming this is done with intents but cant seem to find one that works. The closest one I can find is:

<action android:name="android.intent.action.ACTION_SET_WALLPAPER>

but that doesn't work and seems to be used for something else.

Answer 1

Basically, you can not set activities as a wallpaper. You have to create a Live Wallpaper instead, and draw your content on a SurfaceView using a Canvas. You may create views yourself there in order to draw them on the canvas manually, but that is a little tricky and in most of the cases not what you want.

Answer 2

This should be the intent-filter you want:

<intent-filter>
    <action android:name="android.intent.action.SET_WALLPAPER" />
    <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
</intent-filter>

Defined here: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html#ACTION_SET_WALLPAPER

(The DEFAULT category is a standard syntax for intents.)

Answer 3

The list under 'select wallpaper from' dialogue box that pops up when you click 'wallpapers' from the homescreen has three entries on most phones (I checked stock and HTC Sense):

• Live wallpapers
• Gallery
• Wallpapers (or: HTC wallpapers)

When I press 'wallpapers' from the homescreen on HTC Sense I get:

09-26 20:17:58.901: INFO/ActivityManager(104): Starting activity: Intent { act=android.intent.action.SET_WALLPAPER_DIALOG cmp=com.htc.launcher/.WallpaperChooserDialog (has extras) }
09-26 20:17:59.301: INFO/ActivityManager(104): Displayed activity com.htc.launcher/.WallpaperChooserDialog: 353 ms (total 353 ms)

When on stock:

09-26 20:19:41.231: INFO/ActivityManager(86): Starting activity: Intent { act=android.intent.action.CHOOSER cmp=android/com.android.internal.app.ChooserActivity (has extras) }
09-26 20:19:41.571: INFO/ActivityManager(86): Displayed activity android/com.android.internal.app.ChooserActivity: 294 ms (total 294 ms)

And when I click through on 'wallpapers' when on stock:

09-26 20:19:51.101: INFO/ActivityManager(86): Starting activity: Intent { act=android.intent.action.SET_WALLPAPER flg=0x3000000 cmp=com.android.launcher/com.android.launcher2.WallpaperChooser }
09-26 20:19:51.581: INFO/ActivityManager(86): Displayed activity com.android.launcher/com.android.launcher2.WallpaperChooser: 463 ms (total 463 ms)

You need to use android.intent.action.SET_WALLPAPER. Maybe you forgot some other implementation details such as

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

so the chooser could pick it up? Have a look at Photostream's source code (http://code.google.com/p/apps-for-android/source/browse/trunk/#trunk/Photostream). Romain Guy has it working.