How to change an Android app's name?

Yes you can. By changing the android:label field in your application node in AndroidManifest.xml.

Note: If you have added a Splash Screen and added

 <activity
    android:name=".SplashActivity"
    android:label="@string/title_activity_splash_screen"
    android:theme="@style/AppTheme">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

to your Splash Screen, then the Launcher Icon name will be changed to the name of your Splash Screen Class name.

Please make sure that you change label:

android:label="@string/title_activity_splash_screen"

in your Splash Screen activity in your strings.xml file. It can be found in Res -> Values -> strings.xml

See more here.

There's the android:label for the application, and the android:label for the launch activity. The former is what you see under Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications on your device. The latter is what you see under Applications, and by extension in any shortcut to your application, e.g.

<application
    android:label="@string/turns_up_in_manage_apps" >
    <activity
        android:name=".MainActivity"
        android:label="@string/turns_up_in_shortcuts" >
        ...
    </activity>
</application>

This is a simple thing in Android Studio,

go to: res folder -> values -> strings.xml

change the app_name (in the bellow example:MitsuhoSdn Bhd) to any new name you want.

<string name="app_name">MitsuhoSdn Bhd</string>
<string name="hello_world">Hello world!</string>
<string name="menu_settings">Settings</string>

I noticed there are some differences in how the app name can turn up in Lollipop devices. Before Lollipop, you can have different app names with this:

<application
    android:label="@string/app_name"> // appears in manage app info
    <activity
        android:name=".MainActivity"
        android:label="@string/action_bar_title"> // appears in actionbar title 
        <intent-filter android:label="@string/name_in_icon_launcher"> // appears in icon launcher
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>
    <activity
...

In Lollipop, it will be like this:

<application
    android:label="@string/name_in_manage_app_info">
    <activity
        android:name=".MainActivity"
        android:label="@string/name_in_actionbar_and_icon_launcher">
        <intent-filter android:label="@string/this_is_useless">
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>

In Lollipop, android:label in intent-filter is basically useless, while actionbar title and icon launcher is identical. So, if you want a different title in actionbar, you have no choice but to set dynamically

getSupportActionBar().setTitle(R.string.app_name);

You might have to change the name of your main activity "android:label" also, as explained in Naming my application in android

It depends what you want to do. I personally wanted to rename my project so it didn't say MainActivity at the top of the app and underneath the icon on my phone menu.

To do this I went into the Android Manifest.xml file and edited

<activity
        android:name=".MainActitivity"
        android:label="@string/title_activity_main" >
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />

            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>

And edited the android:name=".Mynewname" and then edited the string title_activity_main in the strings.xml file to match the name.

Hope that helps!

if you want to change app name under launcher icon then change this android:label="@string/app_name" inside your Main Launcher activity tag

        <activity android:name="com.test.app"
                  android:label="@string/app_name" >
                  <intent-filter>
                    <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                    <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
                  </intent-filter>
        </activity>

And if you want to change app name inside

Settings -> Application manager -> downloaded

where you have all installed applications then change this android:label="@string/app_name" inside application tag

<application
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
        android:label="@string/app_name"
        android:theme="@style/AppTheme" >

            ........

        <activity android:name="com.test.app" >
        </activity>

             .......

 </application>

To change the name of your Android application in Android Studio or Eclipse, you have to change the value of the property android:label defined inside the <application> node in AndroidManifest.xml

 android:label="My Cool Application!"

by default the name of the application is referenced to a string defined in strings.xml file, for example:

 android:label="@string/app_name"

so, we have to change the value inside the strings.xml file:

  <string name="app_name">My Cool Application!</string>

<application
      android:icon="@drawable/app_icon"
      android:label="@string/app_name">
          <activity
            android:name="com.cipl.worldviewfinal.SplashActivity"
            android:label="@string/title_activity_splash" >
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>

</application>

To change android app's name , go to activity which is launcher activity and change its label like I have done above in my code.

Nevermind I found it. It can be done in the manifest file under application just set the android label. Was thrown off at first becasue it didn't change my shortcut of the application's name.

Go to Strings.xml file under values. Change the app_name tag to your app_name to want and it is all set, you will be able to see the name you change now.

If you're using android studio an item is under your strings.xml

<string name="app_name">BareBoneProject</string>

It's better to change the name here because you might have used this string somewhere.Or maybe a library or something has used it.That's it.Just build and run and you'll get new name.Remember this won't change the package name or anything else.

follow the steps:(let I assuming you have chosen Android view) app>res>values>strings

<string name="app_name">Put your App's new name here</string>

Edit the application tag in manifest file.

 <application
    android:icon="@drawable/app_icon"
    android:label="@string/app_name"
    android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Black.NoTitleBar.Fullscreen" >

Change the label attribute and give the latest name over there.

The change in Manifest file did not change the App name,

<application android:icon="@drawable/ic__logo" android:theme="@style/AppTheme" android:largeHeap="true" android:label="@string/app_name">

but changing the Label attribute in the MainLauncher did the trick for me .

[Activity(Label = "@string/app_name", MainLauncher = true, Theme = "@style/MainActivityNoActionBarTheme", ScreenOrientation = ScreenOrientation.Portrait)]

Yes Of-course........Android Supports to change the name of the App before making build just like iOS (Build Configuration). You can change it by Modifying the Android manifest file for the project.

Old question but also now relative to Xamarin Android development:

As Xamarin allows for attributes to be used for adding items into the manifest, you may need to open your MainActivity.cs file and change the Label tag to your application's name:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/98rAa.png

Note: This attribute will override written android:label= tags in your manifest file as I found out whilst archiving the app ready for release so be sure to change this attribute too.

If you are here because when you tried to upload your fresh/brand new application using the play console it displayed this error: "You must use another package name because "some.package.name" already exists in Google Play."

You just need to go to your build.gradle file (your application) and change

applicationId "some.package.name"

to

applicationId "some.package.different-unique-name"

Other answers here didn't fix this error.

in my case i need invalidate/cache and restart and its work

change the app string resource to your new activity