How do I check if an app is a non-system app in Android?

Question

I am getting a list of ApplicationInfo Objects with packageManager.getInstalledApplications(0) and attempting to categorize them by whether or not they are a system application.

For a while I have been using the technique described here, however after seeing that in my application, some of the apps were not in the non-system apps list (such as Facebook, which when available asks the system to install itself on the SD card). After next reading the actual documentation for ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM, and understanding that it doesn't actually filter system apps, I am now looking for a new approach.

My guess is that there is a large gap between UIDs of System and non-system apps that I can gather to make this distinction, but as of yet I have not found an answer. I also looked into other flags, such as ApplicationInfo.FLAG_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, however I am supporting API 1.5.

Does anyone have a real solution to this (not involving FLAG_SYSTEM)?

Answer 1

PackageManager pm = mcontext.getPackageManager();
List<PackageInfo> list = pm.getInstalledPackages(0);

for(PackageInfo pi : list) {
    ApplicationInfo ai = pm.getApplicationInfo(pi.packageName, 0);

    System.out.println(">>>>>>packages is<<<<<<<<" + ai.publicSourceDir);

    if ((ai.flags & ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SYSTEM) != 0) {
        System.out.println(">>>>>>packages is system package"+pi.packageName);          
    }
}