How to add a fast-scroller to the RecyclerView

Question

Background

On ListView, you could have a fast scroller which allowed you to drag a scrollbar to easily scroll to wherever you wished (using fastScrollEnabled attribute)

Together with "SectionIndexer" class and optionally some attributes, you could have a nice popup that shows as you use this scrollbar (link here).

Such a thing is shown on the contacts app so that you could scroll easily to specific letters.

The problem

RecyclerView doesn't seem to have any of those. Not even a fast-scroll.

The question

How do I add a fast scroller functionality for the RecyclerView?

Answer 1

I stumbled on this question a few days ago when I ran into this situation. Here is my example implementation of FastScroll for RecyclerView:

github.com/danoz73/RecyclerViewFastScroller

Try running the example application, and peruse the code to see a fairly simple usage of a simple RecyclerViewFastScroller widget. There is information on github, but I'll include the basic usage here for a vertical fast scroller.

For a full example, refer to the sample application in the repo.

Basic Usage

In the activity or fragment XML where your RecyclerView resides, include a VerticalRecyclerViewFastScroller object. The following example would be in a relative layout:

...
  <android.support.v7.widget.RecyclerView
      android:id="@+id/recyclerView"
      android:layout_width="match_parent"
      android:layout_height="match_parent"/>


  <xyz.danoz.recyclerviewfastscroller.vertical.VerticalRecyclerViewFastScroller
      android:id="@+id/fast_scroller"
      android:layout_width="@dimen/however_wide_you_want_this"
      android:layout_height="match_parent"
      android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
    />
...

In your fragment or activity where you setup layout programmatically, hook up the fast scroller to the recycler:

...
  public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) {
      View rootView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.recycler_view_frag, container, false);
      ...

      // Grab your RecyclerView and the RecyclerViewFastScroller from the layout
      RecyclerView recyclerView = (RecyclerView) rootView.findViewById(R.id.recyclerView);
      VerticalRecyclerViewFastScroller fastScroller = (VerticalRecyclerViewFastScroller) rootView.findViewById(R.id.fast_scroller);

      // Connect the recycler to the scroller (to let the scroller scroll the list)
      fastScroller.setRecyclerView(recyclerView);

      // Connect the scroller to the recycler (to let the recycler scroll the scroller's handle)
      recyclerView.setOnScrollListener(fastScroller.getOnScrollListener());

      ...
      return rootView;
  }
...

Hope this helps!

EDIT: There is now added support for Android-Lollipop-Contacts-style section indicators! Check out the sample application's implementation for details.