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.