Question

Is there anyway to capture when the user clicks on the application icon in the built in search dialog? Please note I am NOT referring to a custom dialog but to android built in search dialog.

Answer 1

Nope, there is no way to make the SearchDialog‘s app icon clickable.

But just for fun, let’s assume there existed some hacky workaround that would get the job done. Cool, we have got the desired behavior… but now we have two issues:

1. The behavior of the SearchDialog is not consistent with other Android devices. This lessens the user experience since users expect search interfaces to work the same on all Android devices.

2. Your app now makes use of the internal APIs, which may or may not remain consistent when new SDKs are released. For all you know, the Android team could change the app icon’s id from @+id/search_app_icon to @+id/search_home_icon. Your hack depends on the internal APIs… so such a change will cause newer devices running your app to crash (as any runtime search for search_app_icon will return null).

   Further, companies like Samsung and HTC are free to alter the internal APIs before they release their new devices to the public. The next Samsung Galaxy could potentially completely re-implement the SearchDialog class, update its UI/theme, etc… you can never know for sure.

So basically, you can’t… and you shouldn’t make an attempt to do so.

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Just because I’m bored, here’s the source code that led me to my answer:

1. Check out the source code for SearchManager.java, and notice that the SearchManager keeps the SearchDialog as a private instance variable mSearchDialog.

2. Check out the source code for SearchDialog.java, and notice that the SearchDialog references the app icon as the private instance variable mAppIcon. Also notice that the SearchDialog initializes the variable through a call to findViewById, as seen here.

3. Check out the source code for search_bar.xml and notice that the ImageView is not set to clickable by default. Since there are no (methods in the public SDK that alter the behavior of this View, there is no reliable way to make it clickable.