How to bring view in front of everything?

I have activity and a lot of widgets on it, some of them have animations and because of the animations some of the widgets are moving (translating) one over another. For example the text view is moving over some buttons . . .

Now the thing is I want the buttons to be always on the front. And when the textview is moving I want to move behind the buttons.

I can not achieve this I tried everything I know, and "bringToFront()" definitelly doesn't work.

note I do not want to control the z-order by the order of placing element to layout cause I simply can't :), the layout is complex and I can not place all the buttons at the begging of the layout

You can call bringToFront() on the view you want to get in the front

This is an example:

    yourView.bringToFront();

With this code in xml

 android:translationZ="90dp"

I've been looking through stack overflow to find a good answer and when i couldn't find one i went looking through the docs.

no one seems to have stumbled on this simple answer yet:

ViewCompat.setTranslationZ(view, translationZ);

default translation z is 0.0

An even simpler solution is to edit the XML of the activity. Use

android:translationZ=""

bringToFront() is the right way, but, NOTE that you must call bringToFront() and invalidate() method on highest-level view (under your root view), for e.g.:

Your view's hierarchy is:

-RelativeLayout
|--LinearLayout1
|------Button1
|------Button2
|------Button3
|--ImageView
|--LinearLayout2
|------Button4
|------Button5
|------Button6

So, when you animate back your buttons (1->6), your buttons will under (below) the ImageView. To bring it over (above) the ImageView you must call bringToFront() and invalidate() method on your LinearLayouts. Then it will work :) **NOTE: Remember to set android:clipChildren="false" for your root layout or animate-view's gradparent_layout. Let's take a look at my real code:

.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:hw="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    android:id="@+id/layout_parent"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:background="@color/common_theme_color"
    android:orientation="vertical" >

    <com.binh.helloworld.customviews.HWActionBar
        android:id="@+id/action_bar"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="@dimen/dimen_actionbar_height"
        android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
        hw:titleText="@string/app_name" >
    </com.binh.helloworld.customviews.HWActionBar>

    <RelativeLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:layout_below="@id/action_bar"
        android:clipChildren="false" >

        <LinearLayout
            android:id="@+id/layout_top"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
            android:gravity="center_horizontal"
            android:orientation="horizontal" >
        </LinearLayout>

        <ImageView
            android:id="@+id/imgv_main"
            android:layout_width="@dimen/common_imgv_height"
            android:layout_height="@dimen/common_imgv_height"
            android:layout_centerInParent="true"
            android:contentDescription="@string/app_name"
            android:src="@drawable/ic_launcher" />

        <LinearLayout
            android:id="@+id/layout_bottom"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
            android:gravity="center_horizontal"
            android:orientation="horizontal" >
        </LinearLayout>
    </RelativeLayout>

</RelativeLayout>

Some code in .java

private LinearLayout layoutTop, layoutBottom;
...
layoutTop = (LinearLayout) rootView.findViewById(R.id.layout_top);
layoutBottom = (LinearLayout) rootView.findViewById(R.id.layout_bottom);
...
//when animate back
//dragedView is my layoutTop's child view (i added programmatically) (like buttons in above example) 
dragedView.setVisibility(View.GONE);
layoutTop.bringToFront();
layoutTop.invalidate();
dragedView.startAnimation(animation); // TranslateAnimation
dragedView.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);

GLuck!

Try FrameLayout, it gives you the possibility to put views one above another. You can create two LinearLayouts: one with the background views, and one with foreground views, and combine them using the FrameLayout. Hope this helps.

If you are using ConstraintLayout, just put the element after the other elements to make it on front than the others

i have faced the same problem. the following solution have worked for me.

 FrameLayout glFrame=(FrameLayout) findViewById(R.id.animatedView);
        glFrame.addView(yourView);
        glFrame.bringToFront();
        glFrame.invalidate();

2nd solution is by using xml adding this attribute to the view xml

android:translationZ=""

You can try to use the bringChildToFront, you can check if this documentation is helpful in the Android Developers page.

There can be another way which saves the day. Just init a new Dialog with desired layout and just show it. I need it for showing a loadingView over a DialogFragment and this was the only way I succeed.

Dialog topDialog = new Dialog(this, android.R.style.Theme_Translucent_NoTitleBar);
topDialog.setContentView(R.layout.dialog_top);
topDialog.show();

bringToFront() might not work in some cases like mine. But content of dialog_top layout must override anything on the ui layer. But anyway, this is an ugly workaround.

You can use BindingAdapter like this:

@BindingAdapter("bringToFront")
public static void bringToFront(View view, Boolean flag) {
    if (flag) {
        view.bringToFront();
    }
}


  <ImageView
        ...
        app:bringToFront="@{true}"/>

The order of the overlapping views really depends of 4 things:

1. The attribute android:elevation which is measured in dp/sp
2. The attribute android:translationZ which is also measured in dp/sp.
3. In Constraint Layout, the order in which you put the views in your Component Tree is also the order to be shown.
4. The programmatically order that you set through methods like view.bringToFront() in your kotlin/java code.

The numerals 1 and 2 compite with each other and take preference over the points 3 and 4: if you set elevation="4dp" for View 1 and translationZ="2dp" for View 2, View 1 will always be on top regardless of the numerals 3 and 4.

Thanks to Stack user over this explanation, I've got this working even on Android 4.1.1

((View)myView.getParent()).requestLayout();
myView.bringToFront();

On my dynamic use, for example, I did

public void onMyClick(View v)
     {
     ((View)v.getParent()).requestLayout();
     v.bringToFront();
     }

And Bamm !

You need to use framelayout. And the better way to do this is to make the view invisible when thay are not require. Also you need to set the position for each and every view,So that they will move according to there corresponding position

If you are using a LinearLayout you should call myView.bringToFront() and after you should call parentView.requestLayout() and parentView.invalidate() to force the parent to redraw with the new child order.

Arrange them in the order you wants to show. Suppose, you wanna show view 1 on top of view 2. Then write view 2 code then write view 1 code. If you cant does this ordering, then call bringToFront() to the root view of the layout you wants to bring in front.

You can use elevation attribute if your minimum api level is 21.

Try to use app:srcCompat instead of android:src

You can set visibility to false of other views.

view1.setVisibility(View.GONE);
view2.setVisibility(View.GONE);
...

or

view1.setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);
view2.setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);
...

and set

viewN.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);