Remove the SearchIcon as hint in the searchView

Question

I am doing an application where for example when i click on the image(it is a searchView)

the search pad opens !

and it looks like

but here the default search icon (magnifier) gets displayed but this dissappears as soon as some text is entered

but i dont want that magnifier to be displayed even the image is clicked for the first time

and here i am not using any xml file

my code is

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

    @SuppressLint("NewApi")
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        RelativeLayout relative = new RelativeLayout(this);
        LayoutParams params = new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT);
        relative.setLayoutParams(params);
        setContentView(relative);

        SearchView searchView = new SearchView(this);
        traverseView(searchView, 0);
//      searchView.setIconifiedByDefault(false);
        LayoutParams searchViewparams = new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
//      searchViewparams.addRule(RelativeLayout.ALIGN_PARENT_RIGHT);
        searchView.setLayoutParams(searchViewparams);
        relative.addView(searchView);
    }
    @TargetApi(Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB)
    @SuppressLint("NewApi")
    private void traverseView(View view, int index) {
        if (view instanceof SearchView) {
            SearchView v = (SearchView) view;
            for(int i = 0; i < v.getChildCount(); i++) {
                traverseView(v.getChildAt(i), i);
            }
        } else if (view instanceof LinearLayout) {
            LinearLayout ll = (LinearLayout) view;
            for(int i = 0; i < ll.getChildCount(); i++) {
                traverseView(ll.getChildAt(i), i);
            }
        } else if (view instanceof EditText) {
            ((EditText) view).setTextColor(Color.GREEN);
            ((EditText) view).setHintTextColor(Color.BLACK);
        } else if (view instanceof TextView) {
            ((TextView) view).setTextColor(Color.BLUE);
        } else if (view instanceof ImageView) {
            ((ImageView) view).setImageResource(R.drawable.ic_launcher);
        } else {
            Log.v("View Scout", "Undefined view type here...");
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

In my app i've used android.support.v7.widget.SearchView and to hide search icon this worked for me :

<android.support.v7.widget.SearchView
    ...
    app:iconifiedByDefault="false"
    app:searchIcon="@null"
/>