How to make a Facebook Messenger-like notification like this in Android

Question

I want to implement notifications like the one in the following image.

Notification appears any time. I think it's of course a background service waiting for new messages from the server then shows this. What I think this is an activity implemented as dialog with this custom UI. Am I correct? And is it a normal startActivity method from the service? And how do I do the transition animation to make it appears slowly from left to right with zooming when show up?

Answer 1

Check out this link http://www.piwai.info/chatheads-basics. He provides information about how to add them on your screen.

The trick is to add a View to the WindowManager like following code

private WindowManager windowManager; private ImageView chatHead;  public void addView() {   windowManager = (WindowManager) getSystemService(WINDOW_SERVICE);    chatHead = new ImageView(this);   chatHead.setImageResource(R.drawable.android_head);    WindowManager.LayoutParams params = new WindowManager.LayoutParams(     WindowManager.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,     WindowManager.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,     WindowManager.LayoutParams.TYPE_PHONE,     WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_FOCUSABLE,     PixelFormat.TRANSLUCENT);    params.gravity = Gravity.TOP | Gravity.LEFT;   params.x = 0;   params.y = 100;    windowManager.addView(chatHead, params); } 

Don't forget to add the permission <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW"/>