Start an Activity from a Notification

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When you start an activity from a notification, you must preserve the user's expected navigation experience. Tapping the Back button must take the user back through the app's normal work flow to the Home screen, and opening the Recents screen must show the activity as a separate task. To preserve this navigation experience, start the activity in a fresh task.

The basic approach to set the tap behavior for your notification is described in Create a basic notification. This page describes how to set up a PendingIntent for your notification's action so it creates a fresh task and back stack. How you do this depends on which type of activity you're starting:

Regular activity

This is an activity that exists as a part of your app's normal UX flow. When the user arrives in the activity from the notification, the new task must include a complete back stack, letting the user tap the Back button to navigate up the app hierarchy.

Special activity

The user only sees this activity if it's started from a notification. In a sense, this activity extends the notification UI by providing information that is difficult to display in the notification itself. This activity doesn't need a back stack.

Set up a regular activity PendingIntent

To start a regular activity from your notification, set up the PendingIntent using TaskStackBuilder so that it creates a new back stack as follows.

Define your app's Activity hierarchy

Define the natural hierarchy for your activities by adding the android:parentActivityName attribute to each <activity> element in your app manifest file. See the following example:

<activity
    android:name=".MainActivity"
    android:label="@string/app_name" >
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
    </intent-filter>
</activity>
<!-- MainActivity is the parent for ResultActivity. -->
<activity
    android:name=".ResultActivity"
    android:parentActivityName=".MainActivity" />
    ...
</activity>

Build a PendingIntent with a back stack

To start an activity that includes a back stack of activities, create an instance of TaskStackBuilder and call addNextIntentWithParentStack(), passing it the Intent for the activity you want to start.

As long as you define the parent activity for each activity as described earlier, you can call getPendingIntent() to receive a PendingIntent that includes the entire back stack.

// Create an Intent for the activity you want to start.
val resultIntent = Intent(this, ResultActivity::class.java)
// Create the TaskStackBuilder.
val resultPendingIntent: PendingIntent? = TaskStackBuilder.create(this).run {
    // Add the intent, which inflates the back stack.
    addNextIntentWithParentStack(resultIntent)
    // Get the PendingIntent containing the entire back stack.
    getPendingIntent(0,
            PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT or PendingIntent.FLAG_IMMUTABLE)
}

// Create an Intent for the activity you want to start.
Intent resultIntent = new Intent(this, ResultActivity.class);
// Create the TaskStackBuilder and add the intent, which inflates the back
// stack.
TaskStackBuilder stackBuilder = TaskStackBuilder.create(this);
stackBuilder.addNextIntentWithParentStack(resultIntent);
// Get the PendingIntent containing the entire back stack.
PendingIntent resultPendingIntent =
        stackBuilder.getPendingIntent(0,
            PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT | PendingIntent.FLAG_IMMUTABLE);

If necessary, you can add arguments to Intent objects in the stack by calling TaskStackBuilder.editIntentAt(). This is sometimes necessary to ensure that an activity in the back stack displays meaningful data when the user navigates to it.

Then you can pass the PendingIntent to the notification as usual:

val builder = NotificationCompat.Builder(this, CHANNEL_ID).apply {
    setContentIntent(resultPendingIntent)
    ...
}
with(NotificationManagerCompat.from(this)) {
    notify(NOTIFICATION_ID, builder.build())
}

NotificationCompat.Builder builder = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this, CHANNEL_ID);
builder.setContentIntent(resultPendingIntent);
...
NotificationManagerCompat notificationManager = NotificationManagerCompat.from(this);
notificationManager.notify(NOTIFICATION_ID, builder.build());

Set up a special activity PendingIntent

Because a special activity that starts from a notification doesn't need a back stack, you can create the PendingIntent by calling getActivity(). However, define the appropriate task options in the manifest.

1. In your manifest, add the following attributes to the <activity> element.

   android:taskAffinity=""

   Combined with the FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK flag that you use in code, set this attribute blank to ensure this activity doesn't go into the app's default task. Any existing tasks that have the app's default affinity aren't affected.

   android:excludeFromRecents="true"

   Excludes the new task from the Recents screen so that the user can't accidentally navigate back to it.

   This is shown in the following example:

   <activity
       android:name=".ResultActivity"
       android:launchMode="singleTask"
       android:taskAffinity=""
       android:excludeFromRecents="true">
   </activity>

2. Build and issue the notification:
   1. Create an Intent that starts the Activity.
   2. Set the Activity to start in a new, empty task by calling setFlags() with the flags FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK and FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TASK.
   3. Create a PendingIntent by calling getActivity().

   This is shown in the following example:

   Kotlin

   val notifyIntent = Intent(this, ResultActivity::class.java).apply {
       flags = Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK or Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TASK
   }
   val notifyPendingIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(
           this, 0, notifyIntent,
           PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT or PendingIntent.FLAG_IMMUTABLE
   )

   Java

   Intent notifyIntent = new Intent(this, ResultActivity.class);
   // Set the Activity to start in a new, empty task.
   notifyIntent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK
                       | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TASK);
   // Create the PendingIntent.
   PendingIntent notifyPendingIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(
           this, 0, notifyIntent,
           PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT | PendingIntent.FLAG_IMMUTABLE
   );

3. Pass the PendingIntent to the notification as usual:

   Kotlin

   val builder = NotificationCompat.Builder(this, CHANNEL_ID).apply {
       setContentIntent(notifyPendingIntent)
       ...
   }
   with(NotificationManagerCompat.from(this)) {
       notify(NOTIFICATION_ID, builder.build())
   }

   Java

   NotificationCompat.Builder builder = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this, CHANNEL_ID);
   builder.setContentIntent(notifyPendingIntent);
   ...
   NotificationManagerCompat notificationManager = NotificationManagerCompat.from(this);
   notificationManager.notify(NOTIFICATION_ID, builder.build());

For more information about the various task options and how the back stack works, see Tasks and the back stack.