Question

This looks easy, but I’m not able to disable an ImageButton. It continues to receive click events, and its appearance don’t change like a standard Button would.

There are some similar questions on SO, but they don’t help me.

Even with a very simple layout like this :

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:orientation="vertical">

    <ImageButton
        android:id="@+id/btn_call"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:clickable="false"
        android:enabled="false"
        android:src="@android:drawable/sym_action_call" />

</LinearLayout>

The button is still enabled and I can click it.

What’s strange is that if I change the ImageButton to a simple Button, then it works as expected. The button becomes disabled and unclickable. I don’t understand. Does anyone have an idea?

Answer 1

ImageButton has different inheritance chain meaning it does not extend Button:

ImageButton < ImageView < View

It continues to receive click events

Here is what happens when you set a click listener for the View:

public void setOnClickListener(OnClickListener l) {
    if (!isClickable()) {
        setClickable(true);
    }
    mOnClickListener = l;
}

So if you set a listener the android:clickable="false" changes to android:clickable="true".

and its appearance don’t change like a standard Button would

You should supply a drawable state list to the view so it could set an appropriate image based on android:enabled. Do you have this? Or you have the only image for your button?

EDIT: You can find info on StateListDrawable here. android:state_enabled is what you need to use in the list in order to tell the OS what image to use for that state.

EDIT2: Since you really need to add a listener you can make a check inside of the listener if (!isEnabled()) { return; } else { /* process the event */ }.