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Android Which Animal Are You?

Posted by Suehyun Lim
Suehyun Lim
16,482 Points

Is there any way to have a default value in a spinner that's not selectable? That is, like a title?

I would like my spinners to show "Choose an Option" at startup. And i would like this "title" not to show up in the dropdown list. I also want to use this in the code to see if people missed making a choice. At which time, I can prompt them to make a choice.

1 Answer

Ben Deitch
STAFF
Ben Deitch
Treehouse Teacher
Ben Deitch
Ben Deitch
Treehouse Teacher

Hey Sue!

That is possible, but unfortunately it's not super easy. Spinners weren't designed to support having a default unselectable value, so we have to 'hack' it in. Here's a really good Stack Overflow post that contains a few possible solutions. And as another option, I think in the past I've just placed a TextView over the Spinner and made the TextView unclickable (in XML android:clickable="false"). That way it looks like a title on the Spinner even though it's not.

Hope that helps! Ben

Suehyun Lim
Suehyun Lim
16,482 Points

Thanks, Ben. I'll check it out.