Question

I have done some research and found that it’s possible to have a progress bar in the expanded statusbar area but I am still not sure about whether the animation icon is possible or not.
I have tried the answer of this question: Animation in Notification bar Custom View. However, the icon is not animated.
If it’s not possible, could you point me to any documentation that confirms that?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The video in your referenced question (which I admit I didn’t see was the same as one of the links I gave) clearly shows an animated icon there. At about 0:35. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNcs-sS2nFU&t=0m32s (this link jumps to that part). The arrow has a little black line move down through it repeatedly. Seems like animation to me. Is that what you want?

Regardless, what Android version is that on? Maybe it’s something custom from T-Mobile, I don’t know, it’s just some video on YouTube.

You can create a custom view for the notification, for example: http://www.roman10.net/android-custom-notification-with-progress-bar/ You might be able to use a similar idea with an animation drawable (same SO question again) where Roman10’s got the default android image.

RemoteViews contentView = new RemoteViews(getPackageName(), R.layout.noti);
contentView.setImageViewResource(... your animated resource ...);

Edit

So in the end RemoteViews doesn’t support animation in the image resource as far as I can tell. But I figured out a way to work around that and it is possibly expensive, but I haven’t profiled it to see how the CPU usage is.

I started with the code at roman10 (link above) and made a couple of modifications.

yinyangAnim.xml + animation frame .png files

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<animation-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:oneshot="false">
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/yinyang0" android:duration="150" />
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/yinyang1" android:duration="150" />
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/yinyang2" android:duration="150" />
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/yinyang3" android:duration="150" />
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/yinyang4" android:duration="150" />
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/yinyang5" android:duration="150" />    
</animation-list>

Add another thread creation to the start button click:

             new Thread(new Runnable() {
                    public void run() {
                        int frameIndex = 0;
                        mRun = true;
                        while (mRun) {
                            ++frameIndex;
                            SystemClock.sleep(100);
                            BitmapDrawable frame = (BitmapDrawable) yinyangAnimation.getFrame(frameIndex);
                            noti.contentView.setImageViewBitmap(R.id.status_icon, frame.getBitmap());
                            nm.notify(STATUS_BAR_NOTIFICATION, noti);
                            if (frameIndex >= yinyangAnimation.getNumberOfFrames()-1) {
                                frameIndex = 0;
                            }
                        }

                    }
                  }).start();

Add to ProgressBarNotificationActivity.onCreate()

     ImageView yinyang = new ImageView(this);
     yinyang.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.yinyang_anim);
     yinyangAnimation = (AnimationDrawable) yinyang.getBackground();

And the private variable of course: private AnimationDrawable yinyangAnimation;

Pressing the start button in the app and viewing the notification shows the spinning yin-yang for me. I got the yin-yang at loadinfo.net and split it using ImageMagick command line (ubuntu).