Disable a whole activity from user action

Question

Is there a simple way to disable a user interacting with an activity. To be done when there is an action running (and a spinning progress bar in the title bar)

EDIT: As it seems I was not clear enough I meant to say: while I already have a spinning progress bar, the user is still able to push any button on the activity, I want to disable the user from being able to do that while the task is running. I do not want to however disable each item on the screen one by one.

Thanks, Jason

Do you want to visibly disable all views, or do you just want them to not respond (=not very intuitive for the user)? Or do you want to show a ProgressDialog on top of your activity? — EboMike, Nov 25 '10 at 20:25
Ok, I might have been a little unclear, I meant I already have a spinning dialog but I do not want the user to push more buttons while its working, (IE- disable all items in the activity - but I do not want to do this one by one ) — Jason, Nov 25 '10 at 21:51

Uriel Frankel · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-24T20:17:52.597

153

In order to block user touch events, use:

getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_TOUCHABLE,
WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_TOUCHABLE);

To get touch events back, use:

getWindow().clearFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_TOUCHABLE);

EDIT: If you want to add a feature of disable and greyed out display, you need to add in your xml layout file a linear layout that fills the parent. Set its background to #B0000000 and its visibilty to Gone. Than programicly set its visibility to Visible.

edited May 24 '12 at 20:17

answered May 23 '12 at 13:32

Uriel Frankel

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1

If this does what it sounds like it does, then it suffers from the problem that the user will not see the UI as "Disabled" (Grayed out) – Jason May 23 '12 at 17:23
1

Ok, I have a solution for greying out the screen. Ill post it later – Uriel Frankel May 24 '12 at 07:17
Does anyone knows what WindowManager is? Thought I could import it, but eclipse does not propose it to me, so I guess I should get it from another way... – WhiskThimble Jun 03 '13 at 15:00
4

Don't forget that this will only prevent touch events, so the user will still be able to interact through other input methods, such as a hard keyboard – sorianiv May 17 '16 at 19:40
1

This is working like charm... very nice solution... thanx – venkat Jan 25 '17 at 13:36
this will also disable the toolbar back button.. any way to keep toolbar buttons clickable? – Siddarth G Jan 06 '20 at 10:35
3

This does NOT work for translucent activities. In that case, a tap will be made on the content, which is present in the background activity. – Mangesh Apr 18 '20 at 11:35

ricosrealm · Answer 2 · 2016-02-11T23:12:19.200

11

If you need to disable event processing for a period of time (for instance, while you run an animation, show a waiting dialog), you can override the activity's dispatch functions.

To disable touch/clicks on any buttons, add these members/functions to your activity:

protected boolean enabled = true;

public void enable(boolean b) {
    enabled = b;
}

@Override
public boolean dispatchTouchEvent(MotionEvent ev) {
    return enabled ? 
        super.dispatchTouchEvent(ev) : 
        true;        
}

Then just call enable(true/false) when you need to disable and enable the activity's normal event handling.

edited Feb 11 '16 at 23:12

answered Dec 06 '13 at 00:41

ricosrealm

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with a few tweaks to invert the boolean, this can be expressed more succinctly as `return disabled || super.dispatchTouchEvent(ev);` – gMale Dec 15 '15 at 14:50
@gMale The return value of the method can indeed be condensed, but there is no need to invert the boolean. The following does the trick: `!enabled || super.dispatchTouchEvent(ev)`. Android Studio will suggest that automatically. – Sid Aug 03 '17 at 17:47

Vladimir Ivanov · Answer 3 · 2010-11-25T20:38:23.677

1

Use AsyncTask with ProgressDialog bundled.

another useful example:

http://www.screaming-penguin.com/node/7746

edited Nov 25 '10 at 20:38

answered Nov 25 '10 at 20:25

Vladimir Ivanov

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 13 '16 at 15:05

I solved this by adding an full screen blank image with a null click handler at the end on the XML layout.

Create a transparent PNG file in the drawables folder.

Add a full screen ImageView at the end of the XML layout referencing the image:

...
 <ImageView
     android:layout_width="match_parent"
     android:layout_height="match_parent"
     app:srcCompat="@drawable/img_mask"
     android:id="@+id/imgMask"
     android:scaleType="fitXY"
 android:visibility="gone"
     android:onClick="doNothingClick"
 />

Add the null click hander for the image to capture user touches:

public void doNothingClick(View v){
    // do nothing with the click
}

Add the code to disable the user touches:

private void StopTouches(int duration){
    findViewById(R.id.imgMask).setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
    Handler handler = new Handler();
    handler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            findViewById(R.id.imgMask).setVisibility(View.GONE);
        }
    }, duration);
}

You don't need to use an Image and you don't have to implement an OnClick method. — Joe Kampf, Aug 18 '17 at 20:54

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Sep 07 '16 at 21:56

I have solved this using a custom method - which I did not want to do:

public static void setViewGroupEnabled(ViewGroup view, boolean enabled)
    {
        int childern = view.getChildCount();

        for (int i = 0; i< childern ; i++)
        {
            View child = view.getChildAt(i);
            if (child instanceof ViewGroup)
            {
                setViewGroupEnabled((ViewGroup) child, enabled);
            }
            child.setEnabled(enabled);
        }
        view.setEnabled(enabled);
    }

If anyone finds a better way I'd like to hear about it! Thanks.

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Jul 07 '19 at 05:58

The code of Uriel Frankel (accepted response), works good, but in my case works after my request it's done :(. I want to block before it happend. Some one knows what is wrong in my code (I'm beginning in this..)

(this is a fragment)

   login_login_btn.setOnClickListener {

    if (validateInputs()){
        showSpinner()
        thread {
            doLogin()
        }
    } else {
        validationError("Validation Error","Checkout your inputs. Common errors: \npassword (at least 8 characters)")
    }

}

}

Function after OnViewCreated

fun showSpinner(){
    activity?.window?.setFlags(
        WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_TOUCHABLE,
        WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_TOUCHABLE)
    spinner.visibility = View.VISIBLE
}

Thank you (Y)

score -2 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 25 '10 at 20:51

SpinningProgress in the title bar:

//onCreate(): 
activity.requestWindowFeature(FEATURE_INDETERMINATE_PROGRESS);

//and then: 
activity.setProgressBarIndeterminate(boolean indeterminate)

both in Activity class

Another option is using Progress Dialog (you might want to set cancelable to false on it).

Disable a whole activity from user action

7 Answers7

Function after OnViewCreated

Linked

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