How can I keep a button as pressed after clicking on it? [duplicate]

I had this issue with a button with a custom background, and ended up using the selected state for this. That state is available for all views.

To use this you have to define a custom button background as a state list:

<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
  <item android:state_selected="false" android:state_focused="false" 
     android:state_pressed="false"><bitmap ... /></item>
  <item android:state_selected="true"><bitmap ... /></item>
  <item android:state_focused="true"><bitmap ... /></item>
  <item android:state_pressed="true"><bitmap ... /></item>
</selector>

Then to use that background, let’s say it is in /res/drawable/button_bg.xml in your layout file, you use:

...
<Button android:background="@drawable/button_bg" ... />
...

In your code you can switch to the (de-)selected state in your onClick listener:

myButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
  @Override
  public void onClick(View v) {
    v.setSelected(true);
    // normal click action here
  }
});

The activated state matches the intended meaning better, but is only available from Android 3.x and higher.

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