Android: Clear Activity Stack

Here is a simple helper method for starting a new activity as the new top activity which works from API level 4 up until the current version 17:

static void startNewMainActivity(Activity currentActivity, Class<? extends Activity> newTopActivityClass) {
    Intent intent = new Intent(currentActivity, newTopActivityClass);
    intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);
    intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
    if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB)
        intent.addFlags(0x8000); // equal to Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TASK which is only available from API level 11
    currentActivity.startActivity(intent);
}

call it like this from your current activity:

startNewMainActivity(this, MainActivity.class);

When you call startActivity on the last activity you could always use

Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP

as a flag on that intent.

Read more about the flag here.

Most of you are wrong. If you want to close existing activity stack regardless of what's in there and create new root, correct set of flags is the following:

intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TASK);

From the doc:

public static final int FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TASK
Added in API level 11

If set in an Intent passed to Context.startActivity(), this flag will cause any existing task that would be associated with the activity to be cleared before the activity is started. That is, the activity becomes the new root of an otherwise empty task, and any old activities are finished. This can only be used in conjunction with FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK.