androidfullscreenwindowinsets

How to set completely transparent navigation bar (NOT TRANSLUCENT) and keep receiving window inset updates

The image below is basically my goal, a completely transparent navigation bar (NOT TRANSLUCENT) and the content behind it keeps getting inset updates so it draws behind it, but does not get any UI covered by the navigation controls.

enter image description here

So far the only way possible to achieve the result in the image above is to set the flag FLAG_LAYOUT_NO_LIMITS to the activity. The problem is when that is done, the app no longer receives any insets whatsoever, with the exception of Gesture insets, if gesture navigation is enabled.

I've tried all the combinations I could think of, but so far I am completely unable to achieve 100% transparent navigation bar + window insets.

I assume that the reason why the navigation bar is not translucent when setting that flag is because the system window insets are now 0, as such the translucent area shrinks to 0 height, leaving the navigation controls without background.

I also tried setting

<item name="android:navigationBarColor">@android:color/transparent</item>

However, all this does is leave the navigation bar fully white and the content does not display behind it.

And I also had the following enabled and disabled for all the tests I conducted

<item name="android:windowDrawsSystemBarBackgrounds">true</item>

I've researched high and above the Window Insets nightmare and there's one way to find the window insets via getWindow().getDecorView().getRootWindowInsets(), but then I will be falling to the problem of adding insets when they aren't needed (multi-window mode, for example) and I still won't get window inset updates, such as when the keyboard is opened.

I've watched ( @chris-banes ) Chris Banes' "Becoming a master window fitter", however this specific scenario is never covered.

Is this impossible? We can achieve this result for the status bar, but we will never be able to do the same for the navigation bar? If not, then how can this be achieved?

All I want is a 100% transparent (NOT TRANSLUCENT) navigation bar and the app keeps receiving the window insets with the expected values instead of 0 for all the values.

Solution

  • Chris Banes also has a more recent blog post, going through exactly what you are asking for: https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/windowinsets-listeners-to-layouts-8f9ccc8fa4d1

    In short, set the following system ui flags on the root view:

    rootView.systemUiVisibility = View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LAYOUT_STABLE or
        View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LAYOUT_HIDE_NAVIGATION

    To get the following result:

    enter image description here

    Then you can update the padding or margin of your view to make it available for touch events by adding an onApplyWindowInsetsListener:

    bottomNav.setOnApplyWindowInsetsListener { view, insets ->
    view.updatePadding(bottom = insets.systemWindowInsetBottom)
    insets
}

    For the full solution, I suggest you read the whole post, it's a good read and has helped me a lot.