Remove vertical padding from horizontal ProgressBar

Question

I use the following as a workaround for this issue.

android:layout_marginBottom="-8dp"
android:layout_marginTop="-4dp"

This is how I used Juozas's answer:

height of my ProgressBar is 4dp. So I created a FrameLayout with height 4dp and set the layout_gravity of ProgressBar to center. It's works like a charm.

<FrameLayout
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="4dp">

    <ProgressBar
        style="?android:attr/progressBarStyleHorizontal"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="4dp"
        android:layout_gravity="center"
        android:indeterminate="true" />
</FrameLayout>

Note: What a FrameLayout does is it clips away anything excess, so if you face the problem where the ProgressBar is still thin, just set the layout_height of the ProgressBar to some large number like 100dp. It'll fully cover the FrameLayout and will only show 4dp of it.

If someone still needs help can try this:

<androidx.core.widget.ContentLoadingProgressBar
    android:id="@+id/progress"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    style="@style/Widget.AppCompat.ProgressBar.Horizontal"
    app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
    app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="@+id/guideline"
    android:indeterminate="true"
    android:visibility="visible"
    app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/guideline" />

Here, the progress bar is inside the ConstraintLayout, and the constraintTop_toTopOf and constraintBottom_toTopOf attributes must be applied to the same element (in this case, it is guideline).

*** COMPLETE SOLUTION:***

<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="48dp">

    <View
        android:id="@+id/guideline"
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_height="0dp"
        android:orientation="vertical"
        android:visibility="invisible"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent" />

    <ProgressBar
        android:id="@+id/progress_bar"
        style="?android:attr/progressBarStyleHorizontal"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:indeterminate="true"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/guideline"
        app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="@+id/guideline" />
</androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout>

I ended up using a custom library to solve this issue. Most of the other solutions work but the results are not consistent across various devices.

MaterialProgressBar

• Consistent appearance on Android 4.0+.
• Correct tinting across platforms.
• Able to remove the intrinsic padding of framework ProgressBar.
• Able to hide the track of framework horizontal ProgressBar.
• Used as a drop-in replacement for framework ProgressBar.

To add as a gradle dependency:

compile 'me.zhanghai.android.materialprogressbar:library:1.1.7'

To add a ProgressBar with no intrinsic padding to your layout:

<me.zhanghai.android.materialprogressbar.MaterialProgressBar
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="4dp"
    android:indeterminate="true"
    app:mpb_progressStyle="horizontal"
    app:mpb_useIntrinsicPadding="false"
    style="@style/Widget.MaterialProgressBar.ProgressBar.Horizontal" />

app:mpb_useIntrinsicPadding="false" does the trick. For more details see the GitHub page.

To remove the vertial padding of ProgressBar, you can do by

• fix the height of ProgressBar
• Use scaleY="value" (value = height/4) (4 is default height of progress bar)

Example contains 1 wrap_content ProgressBar, 1 8dp ProgressBar, 1 100dp ProgressBar

<ProgressBar
    style="?android:attr/progressBarStyleHorizontal"
    ...
    android:layout_height="8dp"
    android:scaleY="2" />

It's possible to draw vertically centered ProgressBar inside a parent that would clip away the padding. Since ProgressBar cannot draw itself bigger than parent, we must create a big parent to place inside a clipping view.

<FrameLayout
    android:id="@+id/clippedProgressBar"
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="4dp"
    tools:ignore="UselessParent">

    <FrameLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="16dp"
        android:layout_gravity="center_vertical">

        <ProgressBar
            style="?android:attr/progressBarStyleHorizontal"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="match_parent"
            android:indeterminate="true"/>

    </FrameLayout>

</FrameLayout>