Android built-in spinner

Question

I have a web service which queries the cloud for some data and then populates a ListView.

I would like to display some sort of spinning indicator to the user letting them know that the cloud is being queried.

I would prefer not to show the popup with the spinner on it, as I want my user to still be able to use the application. I use this for my Log In screen, but here this is not applicable.

Is there a built-in way to do this? I could certainly hack it myself by including my own spinning image resource and hiding/showing the resource while the cloud is being queried, but I was hoping that there was some built-in resource so I didn't have to use my own.

Answer 1

Option 1: You can have the subtle spinner on the top right in your title bar. Activity.setProgressBarIndeterminateVisibility().

Option 2: You can add a ProgressBar in your layout. Be sure to make it indeterminate so it looks like a spinner, not a bar. You can turn it on and off by changing its visibility.