The Application Element
There can be many child elements of the root <manifest>
element. Over the course of this book, we will see ones like <uses-permission>
that appear in these manifests.
However, the most important child element by far is <application>
. This describes the app that is using this manifest.
In a significant Android app, most of what goes in the manifest consists of child elements of <application>
, such as the <activity>
element. Beyond that, the <application>
element:
- Provides defaults for behavior of those activities, such as what theme is used to specify colors and such (
android:theme
) - Provides details about the app that get used by other apps (e.g., Settings), such as the app’s display name (
android:label
) and icon (android:icon
and, sometimes,android:roundIcon
) - Configures overall app behavior, such as whether it handles right-to-left languages (a.k.a., RTL), such as Arabic and Hebrew (
android:supportsRtl
) - Configures certain aspects of how the app integrates with the rest of the operating system, such as whether it wishes to participate in device-wide backups (
android:allowBackup
)
We will explore many of these attributes as we proceed in this book.
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