Odtnhj

I have a few ImageButtons in my app and I'v removed the default grey background with

android:background="@android:color/transparent" or android:background="@null"

The problem is, it also removes the onClick highlight background (orange in API8 and blue in API16)

I'v read so many Q&A here, people are all suggesting to use selector.Instead of making another image for each of the buttons, I'd like to have a background color highlight only. Is there a simple way to achieve this?

solution: programmatically

import android.view.View;
import android.view.View.OnTouchListener;

// ...

btn.setOnTouchListener(new OnTouchListener() 
 @Override
 public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) 
 if(event.getAction() == (MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN)) 
 // set background highlight color
 btn.setBackgroundResource(R.color.blue);
 
 if(event.getAction() == (MotionEvent.ACTION_UP)) 
 // restore transparent
 btn.setBackgroundResource(
 getResources().getColor(android.R.color.transparent));
 
 return false;
 
);

It isn't that simple, but does the job and saves me a lot of time making another image for each button while I don't really need fancy onclick styles.

You really need to use a selector for this.

You can use colors for your backgrounds in your selectors, it doesn't need to be a PNG resource (just set the background to a color, instead of a drawable resource).

You will place this code in your drawable folder, with a specific name (like button_sel.xml).

Then you set this as the background to your button in your XML it would look like this:

android:background="@drawable/button_sel"

The selector would look something like this:

<selector
 xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
 <item
 android:drawable="@color/ab_background"
 android:state_focused="true"
 android:state_pressed="true"/>
 <item
 android:drawable="@color/ab_background"
 android:state_focused="false"
 android:state_pressed="true"/>
 <item
 android:drawable="@color/ab_background_on"
 android:state_focused="true"
 android:state_pressed="false"/>
 <item
 android:drawable="@color/ab_background_on"
 android:state_focused="false"
 android:state_pressed="false"/>
</selector>

There are only two attributes relevant in this case - background and src. If you want to use the same background for all image buttons (with color highlight), you need to add the part of background which changes from button to button to your image set by src, which is not too clean and neat (but of course you can do that if you want).

So I think the best here is to use selectors for background, as suggested by many users.

use the following code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
 <item android:drawable="@android:color/holo_blue_light" android:state_pressed="true"/>
 <item android:drawable="@android:color/transparent"/>
</selector>

Don't think so, you can search through the API to find the predefined selector for the ImageButton, than copy the code and alter the selector the way you need it. So you would create a custom ImageButton.

But I don't think there is an easy way, just like you wanted it with just changing a color

I'm having the same problem but now it has been solved. If you are using android:background="@null it will resulted of no background at all and no button pressed animation will be appeared to the user.

Just adding this line of code to make an image button become flashing upon clicked. This is the proper way to alert the user an image button has been clicked.

 android:background="?android:selectableItemBackground