An object used to create frame-by-frame animations, defined by a series of Drawable objects, which can be used as a View object's background.
The simplest way to create a frame-by-frame animation is to define the animation in an XML file, placed in the res/drawable/ folder, and set it as the background to a View object. Then, call start() to run the animation.
An AnimationDrawable defined in XML consists of a single <animation-list> element and a series of nested <item> tags. Each item defines a frame of the animation. See the example below.
// Load the ImageView that will host the animation and// set its background to our AnimationDrawable XML resource.ImageViewimg=(ImageView)findViewById(R.id.spinning_wheel_image);img.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.spin_animation);// Get the background, which has been compiled to an AnimationDrawable object.AnimationDrawableframeAnimation=(AnimationDrawable)img.getBackground();// Start the animation (looped playback by default).frameAnimation.start();
Gets the current alpha value for the drawable. 0 means fully transparent, 255 means fully opaque. This method is implemented by Drawable subclasses and the value returned is specific to how that class treats alpha. The default return value is 255 if the class does not override this method to return a value specific to its use of alpha.
Return a mask of the configuration parameters for which this drawable may change, requiring that it be re-created. The default implementation returns whatever was provided through setChangingConfigurations(int) or 0 by default. Subclasses may extend this to or in the changing configurations of any other drawables they hold.
Intrinsic height is the height at which the drawable would like to be laid out, including any inherent padding. If the drawable has no intrinsic height, such as a solid color, this method returns -1.
Intrinsic width is the width at which the drawable would like to be laid out, including any inherent padding. If the drawable has no intrinsic width, such as a solid color, this method returns -1.
Returns the minimum height suggested by this Drawable. If a View uses this Drawable as a background, it is suggested that the View use at least this value for its height. (There will be some scenarios where this will not be possible.) This value should INCLUDE any padding.
Returns the minimum width suggested by this Drawable. If a View uses this Drawable as a background, it is suggested that the View use at least this value for its width. (There will be some scenarios where this will not be possible.) This value should INCLUDE any padding.
An OPAQUE drawable is one that draws all all content within its bounds, completely covering anything behind the drawable. A TRANSPARENT drawable is one that draws nothing within its bounds, allowing everything behind it to show through. A TRANSLUCENT drawable is a drawable in any other state, where the drawable will draw some, but not all, of the content within its bounds and at least some content behind the drawable will be visible. If the visibility of the drawable's contents cannot be determined, the safest/best return value is TRANSLUCENT.
Generally a Drawable should be as conservative as possible with the value it returns. For example, if it contains multiple child drawables and only shows one of them at a time, if only one of the children is TRANSLUCENT and the others are OPAQUE then TRANSLUCENT should be returned. You can use the method resolveOpacity to perform a standard reduction of two opacities to the appropriate single output.
Note that the returned value does not necessarily take into account a custom alpha or color filter that has been applied by the client through the setAlpha or #setColorFilter methods. Some subclasses, such as BitmapDrawable, ColorDrawable, and GradientDrawable, do account for the value of setAlpha, but the general behavior is dependent upon the implementation of the subclass.
The default behavior defines the outline to be the bounding rectangle of 0 alpha. Subclasses that wish to convey a different shape or alpha value must override this method.
Return in padding the insets suggested by this Drawable for placing content inside the drawable's bounds. Positive values move toward the center of the Drawable (set Rect.inset).
Note: A View uses a Drawable instance as its background and it changes its appearance based on a state. On keyboard devices, it should specify its android.R.attr#state_focused to make sure the user knows which view is holding the focus.
Called when the drawable needs to be redrawn. A view at this point should invalidate itself (or at least the part of itself where the drawable appears).
Indicates whether this drawable will change its appearance based on state. Clients can use this to determine whether it is necessary to calculate their state and call setState.
A Drawable can call this to schedule the next frame of its animation. An implementation can generally simply call android.os.Handler#postAtTime(Runnable, Object, long) with the parameters (what, who, when) to perform the scheduling.
Specify an optional color filter for the drawable.
If a Drawable has a ColorFilter, each output pixel of the Drawable's drawing contents will be modified by the color filter before it is blended onto the render target of a Canvas.
Pass null to remove any existing color filter.
Note: Setting a non-null color filter disables tint.
Return a copy of the drawable's bounds in a new Rect. This returns the same values as getBounds(), but the returned object is guaranteed to not be changed later by the drawable (i.e. it retains no reference to this rect). If the caller already has a Rect allocated, call copyBounds(rect).
Return a copy of the drawable's bounds in the specified Rect (allocated by the caller). The bounds specify where this will draw when its draw() method is called.
Create from inside an XML document. Called on a parser positioned at a tag in an XML document, tries to create a Drawable from that tag. Returns null if the tag is not a valid drawable.
Create a drawable from inside an XML document using an optional Theme. Called on a parser positioned at a tag in an XML document, tries to create a Drawable from that tag. Returns null if the tag is not a valid drawable.
Return the drawable's bounds Rect. Note: for efficiency, the returned object may be the same object stored in the drawable (though this is not guaranteed), so if a persistent copy of the bounds is needed, call copyBounds(rect) instead. You should also not change the object returned by this method as it may be the same object stored in the drawable.
Return the drawable's dirty bounds Rect. Note: for efficiency, the returned object may be the same object stored in the drawable (though this is not guaranteed).
By default, this returns the full drawable bounds. Custom drawables may override this method to perform more precise invalidation.
Returns a Region representing the part of the Drawable that is completely transparent. This can be used to perform drawing operations, identifying which parts of the target will not change when rendering the Drawable. The default implementation returns null, indicating no transparent region; subclasses can optionally override this to return an actual Region if they want to supply this optimization information, but it is not required that they do so.
Inflate this Drawable from an XML resource optionally styled by a theme. This can't be called more than once for each Drawable. Note that framework may have called this once to create the Drawable instance from XML resource.
Whether this drawable requests projection. Indicates that the android.graphics.RenderNode this Drawable will draw into should be drawn immediately after the closest ancestor RenderNode containing a projection receiver.
Return the appropriate opacity value for two source opacities. If either is UNKNOWN, that is returned; else, if either is TRANSLUCENT, that is returned; else, if either is TRANSPARENT, that is returned; else, OPAQUE is returned.
Specify the level for the drawable. This allows a drawable to vary its imagery based on a continuous controller, for example to show progress or volume level.
If the new level you are supplying causes the appearance of the Drawable to change, then it is responsible for calling invalidateSelf in order to have itself redrawn, and true will be returned from this function.
Specify a set of states for the drawable. These are use-case specific, so see the relevant documentation. As an example, the background for widgets like Button understand the following states: [android.R.attr#state_focused, android.R.attr#state_pressed].
If the new state you are supplying causes the appearance of the Drawable to change, then it is responsible for calling invalidateSelf in order to have itself redrawn, and true will be returned from this function.
Note: The Drawable holds a reference on to stateSet until a new state array is given to it, so you must not modify this array during that time.
Use the current Callback implementation to have this Drawable unscheduled. Does nothing if there is no Callback attached to the Drawable.
XML attributes
android:drawable
android:drawable
Reference to a drawable resource to use for the frame. If not given, the drawable must be defined by the first child tag.
May be a reference to another resource, in the form "@[+][package:]type/name" or a theme attribute in the form "?[package:]type/name".
android:duration
android:duration
Amount of time (in milliseconds) to display this frame.
May be an integer value, such as "100".
android:oneshot
android:oneshot
If true, the animation will only run a single time and then stop. If false (the default), it will continually run, restarting at the first frame after the last has finished.
May be a boolean value, such as "true" or "false".
android:variablePadding
android:variablePadding
If true, allows the drawable's padding to change based on the current state that is selected. If false, the padding will stay the same (based on the maximum padding of all the states). Enabling this feature requires that the owner of the drawable deal with performing layout when the state changes, which is often not supported.
May be a boolean value, such as "true" or "false".
Inflate this Drawable from an XML resource optionally styled by a theme. This can't be called more than once for each Drawable. Note that framework may have called this once to create the Drawable instance from XML resource.
Parameters
r
Resources: Resources used to resolve attribute values. This value cannot be null.
parser
XmlPullParser: XML parser from which to inflate this Drawable. This value cannot be null.
attrs
AttributeSet: Base set of attribute values. This value cannot be null.
Make this drawable mutable. This operation cannot be reversed. A mutable drawable is guaranteed to not share its state with any other drawable. This is especially useful when you need to modify properties of drawables loaded from resources. By default, all drawables instances loaded from the same resource share a common state; if you modify the state of one instance, all the other instances will receive the same modification. Calling this method on a mutable Drawable will have no effect.
When the drawable becomes invisible, it will pause its animation. A subsequent change to visible with restart set to true will restart the animation from the first frame. If restart is false, the drawable will resume from the most recent frame. If the drawable has already reached the last frame, it will then loop back to the first frame, unless it's a one shot drawable (set through setOneShot(boolean)), in which case, it will stay on the last frame.
Starts the animation from the first frame, looping if necessary. This method has no effect if the animation is running.
Note: Do not call this in the android.app.Activity#onCreate method of your activity, because the AnimationDrawable is not yet fully attached to the window. If you want to play the animation immediately without requiring interaction, then you might want to call it from the android.app.Activity#onWindowFocusChanged method in your activity, which will get called when Android brings your window into focus.
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Last updated 2026-02-13 UTC.
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