Button background as transparent

Question

To make a background transparent, just do android:background="@android:color/transparent".

However, your problem seems to be a bit deeper, as you're using selectors in a really weird way. The way you're using it seems wrong, although if it actually works, you should be putting the background image in the style as an <item/>.

Take a closer look at how styles are used in the Android source. While they don't change the text styling upon clicking buttons, there are a lot of good ideas on how to accomplish your goals there.

Try new way to set background transparent

    android:background="?android:attr/selectableItemBackground"

You may also use: in your xml:

android:background="@null"

or in code:

buttonVariable.setBackgroundColor(Color.TRANSPARENT);

use #0000 (only four zeros otherwise it will be considered as black) this is the color code for transparent. You can use it directly but I recommend you to define a color in color.xml so you can enjoy re-usefullness of the code.

Add this in your Xml - android:background="@android:color/transparent"

        <Button
            android:id="@+id/button1"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="match_parent"
            android:text="Button"
            android:background="@android:color/transparent"
            android:textStyle="bold"/>