Don't bring button to foreground on click

Question

My app currently looks like below. Three Buttons in a RelativeLayout, the middle button has negative margin left and right to overlap the other two buttons.

Issue: When I click either the left or the right button, it gets to the foreground for a second and overlaps the middle button, which looks very ugly.

    <RelativeLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal">

        <Button
            android:id="@+id/voices"
            android:layout_width="160dp"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"

            android:layout_gravity="center_vertical"

            android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
            android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
            android:onClick="clickVoices"
            android:background="#333"
            android:textColor="#fff"
            android:text="@string/main_voices" />

        <Button
            android:id="@+id/chat"
            android:layout_width="160dp"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_gravity="center_vertical"
            android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
            android:layout_alignParentTop="true"

            android:onClick="clickChat"
            android:background="#333"
            android:textColor="#fff"
            android:text="@string/main_chat" />

        <Button
            android:id="@+id/record"
            android:layout_width="60dp"
            android:layout_height="100dp"

            android:clickable="true"
            android:onClick="clickRecord"
            android:scaleType="centerInside"
            android:src="@drawable/record"
            android:text="Record"
            android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/voices"
            android:layout_toLeftOf="@+id/chat"
            android:layout_marginLeft="-20dp"
            android:layout_marginRight="-20dp"
            android:layout_marginTop="-30dp"
            android:background="@drawable/round_button"

            android:paddingTop="30dp"
            android:layout_marginBottom="10dp" />
    </RelativeLayout>

Answer 1

The default button has animations that run when it's touched and uses a StateListAnimator to do this. The animations that elevate the button changes the android:elevation and android:translateZ properties of the view.

To prevent this from animating, simply stop animations from running on this View by setting: android:stateListAnimator="@null"