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Displaying the Snackbar

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Nathan Esquenazi edited this page May 25, 2016 · 17 revisions

Overview

Snackbars are shown on the bottom of the screen and contain text with an optional single action. They automatically fade out after enough time similar to a toast. Snackbars can be swiped away by the user or contain other actions making them more powerful than simple toasts. However, the API is very familiar.

Note the snackbar at the bottom with an embedded UNDO text on the right side. See this design guide or more details.

Simple Snackbar

Make sure to follow the Design Support Library setup instructions first.

Create a snackbar using make, setting an optional action and then call .show():

Snackbar.make(parentView, R.string.snackbar_text, Snackbar.LENGTH_LONG)
  .setAction(R.string.snackbar_action, myOnClickListener)
  .show(); // Don’t forget to show!

One difference from using Toasts from Snackbars is that the first parameter parentView requires a View instead of a Context. The snackbar uses this parentView parameter to walk up the parent's hierarchy searching for a CoordinatorLayout, FrameLayout, or the top-most container layout, whichever comes first. Adding a CoordinatorLayout in the view hierarchy is helpful in cases where the floating action buttons needs to moved to make room for displaying the Snackbar as discussed in this guide.

In a recent update of the support library, you can now specify LENGTH_INDEFINITE that will continue to show the Snackbar until it is dismissed or another one is shown:

Snackbar.make(parentView, R.string.snackbar_text, Snackbar.LENGTH_INDEFINITE).show();

This can be helpful for error messages that should persist on screen until the user performs the action.

Configuration Options

Additional options can be used to configure the snackbar such a setActionTextColor and setDuration:

Snackbar.make(parentView, R.string.snackbar_text, Snackbar.LENGTH_LONG)
 .setAction(R.string.snackbar_action, myOnClickListener)  // action text on the right side
 .setActionTextColor(R.color.green)
 .setDuration(3000).show();

That's all!

References

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