Start an Android app/intent from an NFC tag?

android nfc
Ollie C picture Ollie C · Dec 23, 2011 · Viewed 32.3k times · Source

On an Android device equipped with NFC reader hardware, is there any in-built support to use the NFC tag contents to fire off an intent (e.g. starting an app)? I am asking whether the support is there by default, I know I could build my own app to listen for NFC events and handle them.

All the NFC tag writing apps I've seen appear to only support text/URLs/contacts, and the contacts support seems useless as many are far too big to fit in a tag.

Answer

robertly picture robertly · Dec 29, 2011

This is possible with Android Application Records. You basically write the package name of the app that you want to start into your NFC tag and when a device scans it, it will do its best to open the application. If its not there, it will take you to Market to download it. This is only available to 4.0 devices and up.

See this dev guide: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/nfc.html#aar

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