Question

I want to determine whether the current device has a small, medium, large or xlarge screen in code. I can’t find anything in the SDK docs that would help me get to that information. All the methods / classes I have looked at provide only absolute values (i.e. screen size in pixels, screen density, etc.).

Is there a way to tell what kind of screen I’m running on in code?

Answer 1

I ended up using bool resources placed in the different bucket folders. I only needed to differentiate between normal (small / medium) and large (large / xlarge) screens, so I did this:

values/bools.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <bool name="screen_large">false</bool>
</resources>

values-large/bools.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <bool name="screen_large">true</bool>
</resources>

Then, I just call getBoolean(R.bool.screen_large) to tell whether the screen is large or not. This way it’s 100% up to the platform decide what screen the device has.