Android - set a ProgressBar to be a vertical bar instead of horizontal?

Question

I am trying to use a ProgressBar as a metering like display. I thought it was going to be an easy task and thought that ProgressBar had a property to set to be vertical, bu

Answer 1

I had recently come across the need for a vertical progress bar but was unable to find a solution using the existing Progress Bar widget. The solutions I came across generally required an extension of the current Progress Bar or a completely new class in it self. I wasn't convinced rolling out a new class to achieve a simple orientation change was necessary.

This article presents a simple, elegant, and most importantly, a no-hack solution to achieving a vertical progress bar. I'm going to skip the explanation and simply provide a cookie cutter solution. If you require further details feel free to contact me or leave a comment below.

Create an xml in your drawable folder (not drawable-hdpi or drawable-mdpi -- place it in drawable). For this example I call my xml vertical_progress_bar.xml

Here's what to place in the xml file:

Create an xml file called styles.xml and place it in res/values. If your project already contains styles.xml in res/values then skip this step.

Modify your styles.xml file and append the following code to the end of the file:

Add your new vertical progress bar to your layout. Here's an example:

That should be all you need to do to make use of a vertical progress bar in your project. Optionally, you might have custom drawable nine-patch images that you are using for the progress bar. You should make the appropriate changes in the progress_bar_vertical.xml file. I hope this helps you out in your project!