How to find out which view is focused?

Question

I need to find out if any view is focused inside an Activity and what view it is. How to do this?

Assignable

Answer 1

Call getCurrentFocus() on the Activity.

Buccinator

For some reason it returns null after cycling all child views with "next" action. – Axle

BTW, getCurrentFocus() is a method of activity, not of view. – Cathe

... so in fragments we can use getActivity().getCurrentFocus().clearFocus() e.g... – Gaven

It is possible to get hosting Activity from a View and call getCurrentFocus(), but not that reliable. – Stash

kotlin: in fragment - activity?.currentFocus – Uitlander

From view: (v.context as? Activity)?.currentFocus. – Hardan

Answer 2

From the source of Activity:

   /**
     * Calls {@link android.view.Window#getCurrentFocus} on the
     * Window of this Activity to return the currently focused view.
     * 
     * @return View The current View with focus or null.
     * 
     * @see #getWindow
     * @see android.view.Window#getCurrentFocus
     */
    public View getCurrentFocus() {
        return mWindow != null ? mWindow.getCurrentFocus() : null;
    }

Frequentation

Answer 3

Try this instead, put everything inside a thread and print the id and classname live to logcat. Just put this code inside your Activity, in the onCreate method then look into your logcat to see what is currently focused.

JAVA

  new Thread(() -> {
        int oldId = -1;
        while (true) {
            View newView= this.getCurrentFocus();
            if (newView != null && newView.getId() != oldId) {
                oldId = view.getId();
                String idName = "";
                try {
                   idName = getResources().getResourceEntryName(newView.getId());
                 } catch (Resources.NotFoundException e) {
                   idName = String.valueOf(newView.getId());
                 }
                Log.i(TAG, "Focused Id: \t" + idName + "\tClass: \t" + newView.getClass());
            }
            try {
                Thread.sleep(100);
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }).start();

KOTLIN

      Thread(Runnable {
            var oldId = -1
            while (true) {
                val newView: View? = this.currentFocus
                if (newView != null && newView.id != oldId) {
                    oldId = newView.id
                    var idName: String = try {
                        resources.getResourceEntryName(newView.id)
                    } catch (e: Resources.NotFoundException) {
                        newView.id.toString()
                    }
                    Log.i(TAG, "Focused Id: \t" + idName + "\tClass: \t" + newView.javaClass)
                }
                try {
                    Thread.sleep(100)
                } catch (e: InterruptedException) {
                    e.printStackTrace()
                }
            }
        }).start()

Be aware this thread runs in a 100ms cycle so it doesn't overflow the CPU with unnecessary work.

Schaub

You could extend this code and add a highlight so you can see which item is selected. It should work as long the item is inside the screen. But using the logcat is much more secure. – Schaub

Answer 4

if you are in a fragment you can use

getView().findFocus()

Circumfuse

Answer 5

for some reason getCurrentFocus() method isn't available anymore; probably it's deprecated already, here the working alternative:

View focusedView = (View) yourParentView.getFocusedChild();

Florez

It is two different methods. getCurrentFocus() is an Activity class method and getFocusedChild() belongs to View class – Margarite

@BoredT: getFocusedChild() is a method on ViewGroup. – Driedup

Answer 6

ViewGroup has quite convenient method for retrieving focused child:

ViewGroup.getFocusedChild()

Burger