How to Disable RecyclerView Scrolling in Android?

RecyclerView is a view group used for displaying data from arrays and databases. RecyclerView basically is a list of items from the data. RecyclerView is often referred to as a successor of GridView and ListView. More about RecyclerView could be found at RecyclerView in Android with Example. RecyclerView lets the users scroll up and down and left and right by setting appropriate orientation via attributes. Most of the applications that we use today prominently use RecyclerView to display or present the data. 

RecyclerView examples

Through this article, we want to show you how you could disable the scrolling ability of the RecyclerView in Android.

Step by Step Implementation

Step 1: Create a New Project in Android Studio

To create a new project in Android Studio please refer to How to Create/Start a New Project in Android Studio. We demonstrated the application in Kotlin, so make sure you select Kotlin as the primary language while creating a New Project.

Step 2: Working with the activity_main.xml file

Navigate to the app > res > layout > activity_main.xml and add the below code to that file. Below is the code for the activity_main.xml file. Create this simple RecyclerView in the layout.

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    tools:context=".MainActivity">

    <androidx.recyclerview.widget.RecyclerView
        android:id="@+id/recycler_view_1"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"/>

</androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout>

Step 3: Create a Card for the RecyclerView (card.xml)

We need to create a layout for displaying our data. In our case, we have a list of cities. So each of such cards will display the city name in the TextView.

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content">

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/place_name"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:gravity="center"
        android:layout_marginVertical="30sp"
        android:textSize="70sp"/>

</RelativeLayout>

Step 4: Create an Adapter for the RecyclerView (MyRecyclerViewAdapter.kt)

We have to create an adapter to pass data (array of the city names) to the RecyclerView.

Kotlin

import android.view.LayoutInflater
import android.view.View
import android.view.ViewGroup
import android.widget.TextView
import androidx.recyclerview.widget.RecyclerView

private val myItemList = arrayListOf("Delhi", "Mumbai", "Hyderabad", "Bangalore", "Chennai", "Kolkata")

class MyRecyclerViewAdapter: RecyclerView.Adapter<MyRecyclerViewAdapter.ViewHolder>() {

    inner class ViewHolder(v: View): RecyclerView.ViewHolder(v), View.OnClickListener{
        val tvPlaceName: TextView = v.findViewById(R.id.place_name)
        override fun onClick(v: View?) {
            TODO()
        }
    }

    override fun onCreateViewHolder(parent: ViewGroup, viewType: Int): MyRecyclerViewAdapter.ViewHolder {
        return ViewHolder(LayoutInflater.from(parent.context)
            .inflate(R.layout.card, parent, false))
    }

    override fun onBindViewHolder(holder: MyRecyclerViewAdapter.ViewHolder, position: Int) {
        holder.tvPlaceName.text = myItemList[position]
    }

    override fun getItemCount(): Int {
        return myItemList.size
    }
}

Step 5: Link the RecyclerView and the Adapter in the Main code (MainActivity.kt)

Refer to the comments inside the code.

Kotlin

import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity
import android.os.Bundle
import androidx.recyclerview.widget.LinearLayoutManager
import androidx.recyclerview.widget.RecyclerView

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)

        // Declaring the recycler view from the layout file
        val myRecyclerView = findViewById<RecyclerView>(R.id.recycler_view_1)

        // Declaring a variable for
        // Initializing Linear Layout Manager
        val myLinearLayoutManager = LinearLayoutManager(this)

        // Setting the layout manager of the
        // recycler view with the Initialized variable
        myRecyclerView.layoutManager = myLinearLayoutManager

        // Setting the adapter of the recycler view
        // with the adapter we created
        myRecyclerView.adapter = MyRecyclerViewAdapter()

    }
}

Output: Run the application

You can see that we are able to scroll.

Step 6: Edit the layout manager to disable the RecyclerView scrolling

Kotlin

import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity
import android.os.Bundle
import androidx.recyclerview.widget.LinearLayoutManager
import androidx.recyclerview.widget.RecyclerView

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)

        val myRecyclerView = findViewById<RecyclerView>(R.id.recycler_view_1)

        // Calling the override functions from
        // the Linear Layout Manager inner class
        val myLinearLayoutManager = object : LinearLayoutManager(this) {
            override fun canScrollVertically(): Boolean {
                return false
            }
        }
        myRecyclerView.layoutManager = myLinearLayoutManager
        myRecyclerView.adapter = MyRecyclerViewAdapter()
    }
}

Output: Now run the application

Now, you can see that we are unable to scroll.