android - Intent to start a navigation activity

Question

In my application I have an option to start navigation to selected POI. Basically what I want is to launch a turn-by-turn navigator from my application. The thing is I don't know which (if any) navigator is installed.

So, the question is how to start an intent by showing a list of suitable activities for navigation to the user first, letting him choose which one he would like to use? Also would be nice to find a way to pass extra parameters to selected activity (this sounds like an issue to me, since different navigation apps use different names for their extras, I guess).

In case it's not clear: I'm looking for a way to DISPLAY A LIST OF SUITABLE APPLICATIONS FOR NAVIGATION WITH THE OPTION TO MAKE ONE DEFAULT.

EDIT: Find here the implementation http://datamoil.blogspot.com/2011/04/android-universal-intent-to-start.html

Answer 1

The bad news is, there isn't a standard Intent URI for navigation.

Yes, google.navigation URIs exist, and an app may choose to support it.

The best solution I can think of is to:

• Explicitly check for known apps
• Implicitly check for apps hooking google.navigation: and perhaps geo: (but then you also get map apps)

You can enumerate the possible implicit targets using PackageManage.queryIntentActivities