Circular gradient in android

Question

You can get a circular gradient using android:type="radial":

<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:shape="rectangle">
    <gradient android:type="radial" android:gradientRadius="250dp"
        android:startColor="#E9E9E9" android:endColor="#D4D4D4" />
</shape>

I always find images helpful when learning a new concept, so this is a supplemental answer.

The %p means a percentage of the parent, that is, a percentage of the narrowest dimension of whatever view we set our drawable on. The images above were generated by changing the gradientRadius in this code

my_gradient_drawable

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <gradient
        android:type="radial"
        android:gradientRadius="10%p"
        android:startColor="#f6ee19"
        android:endColor="#115ede" />
</shape>

Which can be set on a view's background attribute like this

<View
    android:layout_width="200dp"
    android:layout_height="100dp"
    android:background="@drawable/my_gradient_drawable"/>

Center

You can change the center of the radius with

android:centerX="0.2"
android:centerY="0.7"

where the decimals are fractions of the width and height for x and y respectively.

Documentation

Here are some notes from the documentation explaining things a little more.

android:gradientRadius

Radius of the gradient, used only with radial gradient. May be an explicit dimension or a fractional value relative to the shape's minimum dimension.

May be a floating point value, such as "1.2".

May be a dimension value, which is a floating point number appended with a unit such as "14.5sp". Available units are: px (pixels), dp (density-independent pixels), sp (scaled pixels based on preferred font size), in (inches), and mm (millimeters).

May be a fractional value, which is a floating point number appended with either % or %p, such as "14.5%". The % suffix always means a percentage of the base size; the optional %p suffix provides a size relative to some parent container.

You can also do it in code if you need more control, for example multiple colors and positioning. Here is my Kotlin snippet to create a drawable radial gradient:

object ShaderUtils {
    private class RadialShaderFactory(private val colors: IntArray, val positionX: Float,
                                      val positionY: Float, val size: Float): ShapeDrawable.ShaderFactory() {

        override fun resize(width: Int, height: Int): Shader {
            return RadialGradient(
                    width * positionX,
                    height * positionY,
                    minOf(width, height) * size,
                    colors,
                    null,
                    Shader.TileMode.CLAMP)
        }
    }

    fun radialGradientBackground(vararg colors: Int, positionX: Float = 0.5f, positionY: Float = 0.5f,
                                 size: Float = 1.0f): PaintDrawable {
        val radialGradientBackground = PaintDrawable()
        radialGradientBackground.shape = RectShape()
        radialGradientBackground.shaderFactory = RadialShaderFactory(colors, positionX, positionY, size)
        return radialGradientBackground
    }
}

Basic usage (but feel free to adjust with additional params):

view.background = ShaderUtils.radialGradientBackground(Color.TRANSPARENT, BLACK)

Here is the complete xml with gradient, stoke & circular shape.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<shape
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:shape="oval" >

    <!-- You can use gradient with below attributes-->
    <gradient
        android:angle="90"
        android:centerColor="#555994"
        android:endColor="#b5b6d2"
        android:startColor="#555994"
        android:type="linear" />

    <!-- You can omit below tag if you don't need stroke -->
   <stroke android:color="#3b91d7" android:width="5dp"/>

    <!-- Set the same value for both width and height to get a circular shape -->
    <size android:width="200dp" android:height="200dp"/>


    <!--if you need only a single color filled shape-->
    <solid android:color="#e42828"/>


</shape>