How to Add a Long Click to an AndroidX Preference

As part of my goals for this year, I’ve been working on a rather simple Android app.

This app is largely done through the AndroidX Preferences API. This Preference API seemed to lack the ability to handle a long click.

At least it appeared that way initially.

Unfortunately, the only way I found to implement a long click was to extend the preference and override its onBindViewHolder method.

To implement a “long-clickable preference”, I extended the Preference class, included a longClickListener listener that does nothing by default, and an onLongClick method that takes an OnLongClickListener:

import android.view.View;
import androidx.preference.*;

public class LongClickablePreference extends Preference {

    private View.OnLongClickListener longClickListener = v -> true;

    public LongClickableEditTextPreference(final Context context) {
        super(context);
    }

    @Override
    public void onBindViewHolder(final PreferenceViewHolder holder) {
        super.onBindViewHolder(holder);

        View itemView = holder.itemView;
        itemView.setOnLongClickListener(this.longClickListener);
    }

    @Override
    public void onLongClick(final View.OnLongClickListener longClickListener) {
        this.longClickListener = longClickListener;
    }
}

If you look at the methods available in the View, you’ll see that there is a setLongClickable method. This doesn’t need to be explicitly set to true - note that the JavaDoc for the setOnLongClickListener method states that “If this view is not long clickable, it becomes long clickable.”

Unfortunately, you’ll need to make a new class for each type of preference. Preferences that I was able to define that extend Preference include:

• DialogPreference
• PreferenceGroup
• SeekBarPreference
• TwoStatePreference
• CheckBoxPreference
• DropDownPreference
• EditTextPreference
• ListPreference
• MultiSelectListPreference
• PreferenceCategory
• PreferenceScreen
• SwitchPreference
• SwitchPreferenceCompat

If you don’t want to make a new class file, you could always create an anonymous class:

Preference pref = new Preference(context) {
   @Override
    public void onBindViewHolder(final PreferenceViewHolder holder) {
        super.onBindViewHolder(holder);

        View itemView = holder.itemView;
    itemView.setOnLongClickListener(l -> doTheThing());
    }
};

A couple of sources from Stack Overflow:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8912388/how-to-add-a-long-click-listener-to-a-preference
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29115216/how-to-make-a-preference-long-clickable-in-preferencefragment