Animate change of view background color on Android
android, animation, background-color, view
Solution
I ended up figuring out a (pretty good) solution for this problem!
You can use a TransitionDrawable to accomplish this. For example, in an XML file in the drawable folder you could write something like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<transition xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<!-- The drawables used here can be solid colors, gradients, shapes, images, etc. -->
<item android:drawable="@drawable/original_state" />
<item android:drawable="@drawable/new_state" />
</transition>
Then, in your XML for the actual View you would reference this TransitionDrawable in the `android:background` attribute.
At this point you can initiate the transition in your code on-command by doing:
TransitionDrawable transition = (TransitionDrawable) viewObj.getBackground();
transition.startTransition(transitionTime);
Or run the transition in reverse by calling:
transition.reverseTransition(transitionTime);
See Roman's answer for another solution using the Property Animation API, which wasn't available at the time this answer was originally posted.
Problem
How do you animate the change of background color of a view on Android? For example: I have a view with a red background color. The background color of the view changes to blue. How can I do a smooth transition between colors? If this can't be done with views, an alternative will be welcome.