title: Why is category HOME required?
body: <p>I have these categories defined in my application manifest file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;intent-filter&gt;
     &lt;action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" /&gt;
     &lt;category android:name="android.intent.category.HOME"/&gt;
     &lt;category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" /&gt;
  &lt;/intent-filter&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>If I remove the line - </p>
  
  <p><code>&lt;category android:name="android.intent.category.HOME"/&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p>It does not affect any part of the application functionality and I can see my application in the home screen launcher list of my android device.</p>
  
  <p>However, If I remove the last line - </p>
  
  <p><code>&lt;category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" /&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p>I see the change that my application gets disappeared from home screen launcher list of my android device.</p>
  
  <p>So my question is what's the purpose of this category HOME and what's its common use.</p>
  
  <p>If the only purpose of this category is to launch the home screen as mentioned in the <a href="http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html#CATEGORY_HOME">android docs</a>, then this I can do by the following also:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Intent homeIntent= new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN);
  homeIntent.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_HOME);
  homeIntent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
  startActivity(homeIntent);
  </code></pre>