Animate change of view background color in Android

Question

How do you animate the change of background color of a view in Android?

For example:

I have a view with a red background color. The background color of the view changes to blue. How can I do a smooth transition between colors?

If this can't be done with views, an alternative will be welcome.

Answer 1

I ended up figuring out a (pretty good) solution for this problem!

You can use a TransitionDrawable to accomplish this. For example, in an xml file in the drawable folder you could write something like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<transition xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"&gt;
    <!-- The drawables used here can be solid colors, gradients, shapes, images, etc. -->
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/original_state" />
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/new_state" />
</transition>

Then, in your xml for the actual View you would reference this TransitionDrawable in the android:background attribute.

At this point you can initiate the transition in your code on-command by doing:

TransitionDrawable transition = (TransitionDrawable) viewObj.getBackground();
transition.startTransition(transitionTime);

Or run the transition in reverse by calling:

transition.reverseTransition(transitionTime);

I hope this helps you solve your problem!