Android: How to get a list of installed activities, as they appear in launcher, without duplicates

Intent localIntent2 = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_PICK_ACTIVITY);
Intent localIntent3 = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN, null);
localIntent3.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_LAUNCHER); 
localIntent2.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_INTENT, localIntent3);
startActivityForResult(localIntent2, 1);

Try this code. It will list out only the applications which are all installed in your device.

I might be late, but i just found a perfect way of getting all apps having launcher & no duplicate apps (including system apps like contacts, maps, etc.). Although, Satheesh's answer might be working (haven't checked myself), but I wanted to pick multiple activities so I used below code to get installed apps.

I used your second approach and discarded duplicate packages using HashSet. Here's the final code :

    final PackageManager packageManager = getPackageManager();
    Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN, null);
    intent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_LAUNCHER);
    List<ResolveInfo> resInfos = packageManager.queryIntentActivities(intent, 0);
    //using hashset so that there will be no duplicate packages, 
    //if no duplicate packages then there will be no duplicate apps
    HashSet<String> packageNames = new HashSet<String>(0);
    List<ApplicationInfo> appInfos = new ArrayList<ApplicationInfo>(0);

    //getting package names and adding them to the hashset
    for(ResolveInfo resolveInfo : resInfos) {
        packageNames.add(resolveInfo.activityInfo.packageName);
    }

    //now we have unique packages in the hashset, so get their application infos
    //and add them to the arraylist
    for(String packageName : packageNames) {
        try {
            appInfos.add(packageManager.getApplicationInfo(packageName, PackageManager.GET_META_DATA));
        } catch (NameNotFoundException e) {
            //Do Nothing
        }
    }

    //to sort the list of apps by their names
    Collections.sort(appInfos, new ApplicationInfo.DisplayNameComparator(packageManager));

Try below code and let me know what happened.

PackageManager manager = getPackageManager();
Intent mainIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN, null);
mainIntent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_LAUNCHER);

List<ResolveInfo> resolveInfos= manager.queryIntentActivities(mainIntent, 0);
// Below line is new code i added to your code
Collections.sort(resolveInfos, new ResolveInfo.DisplayNameComparator(manager));

for(ResolveInfo info : resolveInfos) {
     ApplicationInfo applicationInfo = info.activityInfo.applicationInfo;
     //...
     //get package name, icon and label from applicationInfo object    
}