How to send emails from my Android application?

I was using something along the lines of the currently accepted answer in order to send emails with an attached binary error log file. GMail and K-9 send it just fine and it also arrives fine on my mail server. The only problem was my mail client of choice Thunderbird which had troubles with opening / saving the attached log file. In fact it simply didn't save the file at all without complaining.

I took a look at one of these mail's source codes and noticed that the log file attachment had (understandably) the mime type message/rfc822. Of course that attachment is not an attached email. But Thunderbird cannot cope with that tiny error gracefully. So that was kind of a bummer.

After a bit of research and experimenting I came up with the following solution:

public Intent createEmailOnlyChooserIntent(Intent source,
    CharSequence chooserTitle) {
    Stack<Intent> intents = new Stack<Intent>();
    Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SENDTO, Uri.fromParts("mailto",
            "[email protected]", null));
    List<ResolveInfo> activities = getPackageManager()
            .queryIntentActivities(i, 0);

    for(ResolveInfo ri : activities) {
        Intent target = new Intent(source);
        target.setPackage(ri.activityInfo.packageName);
        intents.add(target);
    }

    if(!intents.isEmpty()) {
        Intent chooserIntent = Intent.createChooser(intents.remove(0),
                chooserTitle);
        chooserIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_INITIAL_INTENTS,
                intents.toArray(new Parcelable[intents.size()]));

        return chooserIntent;
    } else {
        return Intent.createChooser(source, chooserTitle);
    }
}

It can be used as follows:

Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
i.setType("*/*");
i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, Uri.fromFile(crashLogFile));
i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL, new String[] {
    ANDROID_SUPPORT_EMAIL
});
i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "Crash report");
i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "Some crash report details");

startActivity(createEmailOnlyChooserIntent(i, "Send via email"));

As you can see, the createEmailOnlyChooserIntent method can be easily fed with the correct intent and the correct mime type.

It then goes through the list of available activities that respond to an ACTION_SENDTO mailto protocol intent (which are email apps only) and constructs a chooser based on that list of activities and the original ACTION_SEND intent with the correct mime type.

Another advantage is that Skype is not listed anymore (which happens to respond to the rfc822 mime type).

The best (and easiest) way is to use an Intent:

Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
i.setType("message/rfc822");
i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL  , new String[]{"[email protected]"});
i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "subject of email");
i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT   , "body of email");
try {
    startActivity(Intent.createChooser(i, "Send mail..."));
} catch (android.content.ActivityNotFoundException ex) {
    Toast.makeText(MyActivity.this, "There are no email clients installed.", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
}

Otherwise you'll have to write your own client.

I've been using this since long time ago and it seems good, no non-email apps showing up. Just another way to send a send email intent:

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SENDTO); // it's not ACTION_SEND
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "Subject of email");
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "Body of email");
intent.setData(Uri.parse("mailto:[email protected]")); // or just "mailto:" for blank
intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK); // this will make such that when user returns to your app, your app is displayed, instead of the email app.
startActivity(intent);

Use .setType("message/rfc822") or the chooser will show you all of the (many) applications that support the send intent.