App shortcuts

The Play Games services may automatically add app shortcuts, for example to allow users to quickly choose the Play Games Services profile to use. The app shortcuts could be added or removed based on the number of the accounts on the device and the game usage.

Available shortcuts

Profile switcher: shortcut for players to switch between different Play Games Profiles. See How to switch Play Games profiles, for corresponding Help Center article.

Manage the Play Games services populated app shortcuts

In case your game actively uses the app shortcuts, you could limit the number of app shortcuts populated by the Play Games services. For that add a meta-data element to any "android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" activity declaration, setting the following:

• android:name to "com.google.android.gms.games.APP_SHORTCUTS_MAX_NUMBER"
• android:value to the maximum number of the app shortcuts slots that can be used by the Play Games services.

Example

In this example, we show how to limit the maximum number of the app shortcuts slots that the Play Games services can use to two. For our example, we initially would have an app manifest that looks like the following:

<manifest ... >
    <application ... >
        <activity android:name=".ExampleActivity" >
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity >
        ...
    </application >
    ...
</manifest >

And to apply the limits the app manifest should be updated to the following:

<manifest ... >
    <application ... >
        <activity android:name=".ExampleActivity" >
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
            <meta-data
                android:name="com.google.android.gms.games.APP_SHORTCUTS_MAX_NUMBER"
                android:value="2" />
        </activity >
        ...
    </application >
    ...
</manifest >

That's it. Now the maximum number of the app shortcuts slots that the Play Games services can use is limited to two.