Android: Progress Dialog spinner not spinning

Question

This seems to be an Android-wide problem, which you can see in API demos under Views -> Progress Bar -> Dialogs.

Basically, if you show a progress dialog, it works as expected the first time around. If you dismiss it and show it again (without destroying the activity or anything like that), the spinning image stops spinning. In the API Demo you can see this by clicking "Show Indeterminate", pressing back to dismiss the dialog, and clicking the button again.

I've tried constructing my own progress dialog, however it shows the same problem, as the problem is with the "ProgressBar" spinning image.

I am wondering if anyone has a workaround for this problem.

Answer 1

If you dismiss a Dialog, you must not show the same instance again. Either create a new one, or use hide() instead of dismiss(). When using hide() you still have to dismiss() it when no longer needed.

Answer 2

I was looking for the same answer, however none of the answers here worked for me because I wanted to use the Activity's dialog methods like Activity.showDialog() so I didn't have to manage them myself and also so they would automatically be recreated on a rotation.

Like some of the other answers said, if dismiss() is called on a ProgressDialog it will stop spinning. Activity.onCreateDialog() saves a reference to the dialog, so once it is created it will not be recreated on the next Activity.showDialog() call. It will just call Activity.onPrepareDialog() and use the instance it already had. If it was dismissed then it won't spin when it is showed again.

You can force it to recreate itself if you call Activity.removeDialog() with the ProgressDialog's id instead of calling Dialog.dismiss(). This will dismiss it and also remove that reference so when Activity.onShowDialog() is called next it will use Activity.onCreateDialog() instead of only Activity.onPrepareDialog() and create a brand new (and spinning) instance.

Make sure if you have a ProgressDialog that can be dismissed or canceled you set a listener so you can call Activity.removeDialog(). Otherwise it will only be dismissed. You could also call it right before you call Activity.showDialog().

Hope that helps someone.