Get started

Get the plugin SDK

Kvaesitso comes with a plugin SDK that abstracts away the low level details of inter-app communication and streamlines the process of creating plugins.

Add the following dependency to your project:

de.mm20.launcher2:plugin-sdk:$version

The current version is:

Create your first plugin

Start by creating a new class and giving it a meaningful name.

class MyFirstPlugin

This class needs to extends one of the plugin base classes. Which class to extend depends on the kind of plugin that you want to develop. Please refer to the article of the respective plugin type to continue. But first, regardless of plugin type, you need to register your plugin in the AndroidManifest.xml.

Under the hood, plugins are implemented using Android's content provider APIs. While the plugin SDK abstracts most of that away from you, you still need to register the plugin class as a content provider in the AndroidManifest.xml:

<provider
    android:name=".MyFirstPlugin"
    android:authorities="your.package.name.authority"
    android:exported="true">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="de.mm20.launcher2.action.PLUGIN" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
    </intent-filter>
</provider>

• android:name is the class name of your plugin class.
• android:authorities must be a globally unique name. It is a good practice to prefix it with your app's package name and add a unique suffix.

  WARNING

  You must not change this later or things will break.

• The <intent-filter /> lets Kvaesitso know that this content provider is a plugin.

Next steps

Your next steps depend on the type of plugin that you want to develop:

• Weather provider plugin: Weather Provider
• File search plugin: File Search Provider