Launch Browser Intent with Custom Class - cannot find Activity

Question

I want to specifically run the default Android browser for a given URL. I'm using this code:

Intent i = new Intent();
i.setAction("android.intent.action.VIEW"); 
i.addCategory("android.intent.category.BROWSABLE");
i.setClassName("com.google.android.browser", "com.android.browser.BrowserActivity");
i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
i.setData(Uri.parse(url));
startActivity(i);

The error I receive is:

Unable to find explicit activity class {
com.google.android.browser/com.android.browser.BrowserActivity}; 
have you declared this activity in your AndroidManifest.xml?

I also tried filtering the intents by the package:

i.setPackage("com.google.android.browser");

instead of setClassName, but to no avail:

No Activity found to handle Intent { act=android.intent.action.VIEW 
cat=[android.intent.category.BROWSABLE] 
dat=http://www.google.com/ flg=0x10000000 pkg=android }

I also tried adding <uses-library android:name="com.google.android.browser" /> to the manifest.

Am I missing something here?

PS: I'm not interested in using startActivity(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse("http://www.google.com"))) as it will list all the choices for the browsing Intent.

Answer 1

Please note the default browser can be overridden and it's not always the built in browser app, it can be for example Opera Mini.

You need to do this way:

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
Uri data = Uri.parse("http://www.google.com");
intent.setData(data);
startActivity(intent);