What is the difference between Bitmap and Drawable in Android?

android android-drawable terminology android-bitmap
Nikhil C George picture Nikhil C George · Jan 20, 2012 · Viewed 56.2k times · Source

I googled but i couldn't find any article to describe about the difference between Bitmap and Drawable in Android.

Answer

Ted Hopp picture Ted Hopp · Jan 20, 2012

A Bitmap is a representation of a bitmap image (something like java.awt.Image). A Drawable is an abstraction of "something that can be drawn". It could be a Bitmap (wrapped up as a BitmapDrawable), but it could also be a solid color, a collection of other Drawable objects, or any number of other structures.

Most of the Android UI framework likes to work with Drawable objects, not Bitmap objects. A View can accept any Drawable as a background. An ImageView can display a foreground Drawable. Images stored as resources are loaded as Drawable objects.

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