How to use Activity attribute android:showForAllUsers in Xamarin? - xamarin

Question

The attribute is not implemented in Xamarin. This mean I can't declare it as an attribute of my Activity Class like it should:
[Activity(Label = "#string/app_name", Theme = "#style/MainTheme.StopAlarm", LaunchMode = Android.Content.PM.LaunchMode.SingleTask, ScreenOrientation = Android.Content.PM.ScreenOrientation.Portrait, NoHistory = true)]
public class StopAlarmActivity : Activity
{
...
}
There's no ShowForAllUsers option.
The other option is to edit Properties => AndroidManifest.xml and add the activity manually like this:
<activity
android:name=".StopAlarmActivity"
android:label="#string/app_name"
android:theme="#style/MainTheme.StopAlarm"
android:showForAllUsers="true">
</activity>
But once I compile the final AndroidManifest.xml file contains two declarations, the manually added and the compiled one from the class declaration.
<activity android:name=".StopAlarmActivity" android:label="#string/app_name" android:theme="#style/MainTheme.StopAlarm" android:showForAllUsers="true"></activity>
<activity android:label="#string/app_name" android:launchMode="singleTask" android:noHistory="true" android:screenOrientation="portrait" android:theme="#style/MainTheme.StopAlarm" android:name="md5e24228758d0205525e724fe958bff865.StopAlarmActivity" />
That said, it looks like the only option is to edit the compiled AndroidManifest.xml file after each compilation. Which is a major breach for problems.
Any other way to accomplish it where I don't need to rely on remembering it every time I compile the app?

Answer 1

On your Activity attribute, applied a Name to avoid the MD5-based Java class auto-naming:
[Activity(Name = "com.sushihangover.MainActivity")]
In your manifest use the same fully-qualified name (no abbreviated dot notation) with the attributes you wish to apply to this activity:
<activity
android:name="com.sushihangover.MainActivity"
android:showForAllUsers="true"
android:icon="#mipmap/icon"
android:label="MainActivity" >
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
Note: All the attributes for this Activity need to be added within the manifest, not the Activity class attribute.
The final manifest entries will be merged correctly:
<activity android:name="com.sushihangover.MainActivity" android:showForAllUsers="true" android:icon="#mipmap/icon" android:label="MainActivity">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>