How do I open the SearchView programmatically?

Question

There is this widget for the ActionBar which called 'SearchView'. When it's not in use, it looks like this:

enter image description here

And when it's in use, it looks like this:

enter image description here

I want (programmatically of course) to open the searchview (make it "in use").

I tried several functions such as:

SearchView searchView = (SearchView) menu.findItem(R.id.menu_search).getActionView(); searchView.setOnQueryTextListener(this); searchView.performClick(); searchView.requestFocus();

But none of those worked...

The SearchView in the XML:

<item android:id="@+id/menu_search" android:title="Search" android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_search" android:showAsAction="ifRoom|collapseActionView" android:actionViewClass="android.widget.SearchView" />

Matthias Robbers · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-09 14:33:52Z

280

Expand the SearchView with

searchView.setIconified(false);

and collapse it with

searchView.setIconified(true);

You need to change the value of android:showAsAction from ifRoom|collapseActionView to always. The SearchView's attribute android:iconifiedByDefault should be true, which is the default value, otherwise the user can not collapse the SearchView after it was expanded programmatically.

edited Jan 9, 2013 at 14:33

answered Jan 9, 2013 at 13:12

Matthias Robbers

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8 Comments

Eli Revah Over a year ago

Hello, a keyboard pops-up but the SearchView does not open.

Matthias Robbers Over a year ago

OK, I'm a little surprised, works for me. searchView.onActionViewExpanded() should work as well. If not, can you show your menu.xml?

Eli Revah Over a year ago

Hello, this also didn't work. I updated the post with the XML source code.

Francesco Gabbrielli Over a year ago

showAsAction="always" will display an ugly fullscreen search bar though, after rotation

ixx Over a year ago

showAsAction="always" makes the search icon stay on the action bar when is expanded, which doesn't resemble to appearance when focusing the search manually.

|

jakub · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-21 13:03:42Z

83

Try to call expandActionView() on MenuItem, not onActionViewExpanded() on ActionView.

It works for me.

MenuItem searchMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.menu_search); searchView = (SearchView) searchMenuItem.getActionView(); searchMenuItem.expandActionView();

answered Sep 21, 2013 at 13:03

jakub

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2 Comments

Andrei Aulaska Over a year ago

Works perfect, but only for API > 14. For earlier API you can use this: MenuItemCompat.expandActionView(searchMenuItem);

ixx Over a year ago

This is the correct solution - The selected one forces you to set showAsAction: always which causes some issues.

Olayinka · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-18 08:14:45Z

If you want to use support library only when necessary, do this

 MenuItem searchMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.action_search); if (Utils.hasIceCreamSandwich()) searchMenuItem.expandActionView(); else MenuItemCompat.expandActionView(searchMenuItem);

else simply do this

 MenuItem searchMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.action_search); MenuItemCompat.expandActionView(searchMenuItem);

James Campbell · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-10 22:26:32Z

I know this is late but

Try calling expandActionView() to open it and collapseActionView() to close it. You can call requestFocus() on the actual Action View via getActionView() to give the search view focus :)

Azizur Rehman · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-29 10:15:55Z

For androidx.appcompat.widget.SearchView,

searchView.setIconifiedByDefault(true) // didn't work searchMenuItem.expandActionView() // didn't work MenuItemCompat.expandActionView(searchMenuItem) // didn't work searchView.onActionViewExpanded() // didn't work

The following worked for me,

searchView.findViewById<View>(R.id.search_button).performClick()

You should rather use searchView.setIconified(false) to expand the search view

Gunnar Bernstein · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-08 22:49:16Z

Expanding the answer of Matthias Robberts:

I wanted a list fragment to keep it's search value and set it after user returns from other fragment.

if (myViewModel.filterTextSaved.isNotEmpty()) { // Kotlin, storing state in ViewModel searchItem.expandActionView() // needs to come first, otherwise empty text theTextArea.setText(courseViewModel.filterTextOnClick) }

and for the menu I keep always|collapseActionView, otherwise it stays open when user deletes the text.

Vyacheslav Trushin · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-25 12:51:51Z

I was searching for a solution to expand SearchView programmatically because I need to restore expand state. No one solution was worked for me. Except using Handler().post(). I know it's not a good practice to use post(). But I'm working on legacy project and this workaround is acceptable for me.

Initialize variables block

val searchMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.menu_search_item) val searchView = searchMenuItem.actionView as SearchView

How to expand SearchView:

Handler().post { searchMenuItem.expandActionView() }

Reason why post() helps: if your app is not well written it may doing too much work on UI thread. post() ensures that your block of code will be executed when UI thread will be available for execution. Which means if you are using this workaround you can notice small delay between SearchView expanding

Santanu Sur · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-16 18:55:07Z

To open up a searchView keeping the close_button in the end use this in onCreate:-

searchView.findViewById(R.id.search_button).performClick();

All Іѕ Vаиітy · Accepted Answer · 2023-07-07 10:29:35Z

If you are using Material Search View com.google.android.material.search.SearchView,

you can show and hide the `` with

searchView.show() // expands SearchView searchView.hide() // collapses SearchView

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