How do I get the _count in my content provider?

If you are using contentProvider then you have to do it like count(*) AS count.

If you use cursor.getCount(), that would not be as efficient as the above approach. With cursor.getCount() you are fetching all the records just to get counts. The entire code should look like following –

 Cursor countCursor = getContentResolver().query(CONTENT_URI,
                new String[] {"count(*) AS count"},
                null,
                null,
                null);

        countCursor.moveToFirst();
        int count = countCursor.getInt(0);

The reason why this works is because android needs a column name to be defined.