How to distinguish between initial load and content change in Android Paging 3?

I have a RecyclerView that uses a PagingDataAdapter to show its items. On initial load of the entire page, I want to show a Shimmer loading placeholder. However, when I try to do this, the loading placeholder also shows up for a small content change of a single item. This makes the entire screen flicker because it hides the RecyclerView during loading and reshows it once the content change has been loaded. I don't want the loading placeholder to show for a single content change.

I am checking the loading state in the load state listener for the adapter:

addLoadStateListener {
    val taskListState = when (it.refresh) { // triggered for both initial load and content change
        is LoadState.Loading -> ScheduleViewModel.TaskListState.LOADING
        // I want something like if (loadStateIsForInitialLoad()) ScheduleViewModel.TaskListState.LOADING else ScheduleViewModel.TaskListState.PRESENT
        is LoadState.Error -> ScheduleViewModel.TaskListState.ERROR
        is LoadState.NotLoading ->
            if (it.append.endOfPaginationReached && itemCount < 1) {
                ScheduleViewModel.TaskListState.EMPTY
            } else {
                ScheduleViewModel.TaskListState.PRESENT
            }
    }
    scheduleViewModel.setTaskListState(taskListState)
}

The content change goes through the database:

class ScheduleViewModel @Inject constructor(private val taskRepository: TaskRepository) :
        ViewModel() {

  fun updateDoneState(task: TaskItem) {
    viewModelScope.launch(Dispatchers.IO) {
        if (task.isDone) {
            taskRepository.markUndone(task.id)
        } else {
            taskRepository.markDone(task.id)
        }
    }
  }
}

Layout:

<layout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
        xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto">
    <data>
        <variable name="viewModel" type="ogbe.eva.prompt.ui.schedule.ScheduleViewModel"/>
    </data>
    <FrameLayout
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="match_parent">

        <com.facebook.shimmer.ShimmerFrameLayout
                android:id="@+id/shimmerFrameLayout"
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                app:isVisible="@{viewModel.isLoading}">

            <LinearLayout
                    android:layout_width="match_parent"
                    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                    android:orientation="vertical">

                <include layout="@layout/item_task_placeholder"/>

                <include layout="@layout/item_task_placeholder"/>

                <include layout="@layout/item_task_placeholder"/>

                <include layout="@layout/item_task_placeholder"/>

                <include layout="@layout/item_task_placeholder"/>

            </LinearLayout>

        </com.facebook.shimmer.ShimmerFrameLayout>

        <androidx.recyclerview.widget.RecyclerView
                android:id="@+id/task_list"
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
                android:layout_height="match_parent"
                android:padding="@dimen/spacing_sm"
                app:isVisible="@{viewModel.isPresent}"/>

    </FrameLayout>
</layout>

It looks like CombinedLoadStates only has one refresh load state for both initial load and content changes. Is there some other way to distinguish them?

Are you using RemoteMediator? If so, you can just observe changes to CombinedLoadStates.mediator.refresh. CombinedLoadStates.refresh is just a helper which combiens both mediator + source states for "common" use-case.

If you're only using PagingSource and updating DB / invalidating separately from RemoteMediator, you can also check against adapter.itemCount to determine "initial load".

adapter.addLoadStateListener { loadStates ->
  when (loadStates.source.refresh) {
    is NotLoading -> {
      // Always redundantly disable loading spinner here, which assumes doing so
      // is stateless.
      scheduleViewModel.setTaskListState(
        if (it.append.endOfPaginationReached && itemCount < 1) {
          ScheduleViewModel.TaskListState.EMPTY
        } else {
          ScheduleViewModel.TaskListState.PRESENT
        }
      )
    }
    is LoadState.Loading -> {
      if (adapter.itemCount == 0) {
        ScheduleViewModel.TaskListState.LOADING
      } else {
        ScheduleViewModel.TaskListState.PRESENT
      }
    }
    is LoadState.Error -> ScheduleViewModel.TaskListState.ERROR
  }
}

Otherwise, you can also just track this yourself and mix-in with loadStateFlow, but kind of need to define a bit more precisely what you mean by initial load. For example does configuration change or process death count as initial load or do you just care about non-cached (in memory and db) case?