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GSoC 2026

Pin projects to the Android launcher (“Play as app” shortcuts)

Currently, Catrobat users have to return to the Catroid IDE every time they want to play their projects, which breaks the experience and makes their creations feel less like real, standalone apps. To address this, I propose introducing a “Pin to Home Screen” feature that allows users to launch their projects directly from the Android home screen, just like any other app. This will be achieved using a lightweight ShortcutTrampolineActivity that retrieves the project ID and opens it directly in Play mode, along with proper task configuration so each project runs independently and exits back to the home screen instead of the IDE. The project will include a smooth UI integration with adaptive icons, a decoupled StageActivity for independent execution, robust lifecycle handling to manage renamed or deleted projects safely, and comprehensive automated testing (JUnit and Espresso) to ensure reliability across different Android versions.

Project details

Contributor

Harsh somankar

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