Confusion between getLocationInWindow and getLocationOnScreen

Question

What I have understood is that getLocationOnScreen returns location with added height of status bar (or actionbar or title bar too ?) in Y axis from very top-left of screen corner.

And getLocationInWindow returns location from top-left of root content view of activity.

Now, everything seems to make sense. But when Im trying to get location using getLocationOnScreen and getLocationInWindow, they both return same location of a button with added height of status bar. For getLocationOnScreen it seems correct but for getLocationInWindow it seems wrong.

Is there something I'm missing ? or its just buggy ? I tested this in API-4 and API-14.

Answer 1

Even though this question has been answered before, I think it is still worth an effort to make this clearer.

If you look into the code of getLocationOnScreen and getLocationInWindow:

public void getLocationOnScreen(int[] outLocation) {
    // It calls the getLocationInWindow
    getLocationInWindow(outLocation);

    // and adjust accordingly in case the window is not the top-level window 
    final AttachInfo info = mAttachInfo;
    if (info != null) {
        outLocation[0] += info.mWindowLeft; // refer image below
        outLocation[1] += info.mWindowTop; // refer image below
    }
}

public void getLocationInWindow(int[] outLocation) {
    // do my calculation here 
    // by traversing views contained in this window (in a single tree of views) 
    ...
}

This is further explained in the image below, where blue indicates screen & red indicates window:

It is important to note that window can be your top-level window (covers the entire screen), or other custom windows such as dialog.

So, going back to your questions:

getLocationOnScreen returns location with added height of status bar

That's right. Your phone's screen includes the status bar's view

getLocationOnScreen and getLocationInWindow, they both return same location of a button with added height of status bar

That is because the window you are working with is the top level window that covers your entire phone's screen.