Android SeekBar Touch Sensitivity

Question

Recently I have been working on an app which has a SeekBar. The SeekBar is rather thin so it can at times be difficult to use it (you have to be very precise in your gestures). Is there any way to increase the touchable area of the SeekBar? So I want users to be able to touch above or below the SeekBar to move the thumb. I'd appreciate any help you can offer!

Answer 1

One of the most straightforward approaches is to increase a value of the android:padding attribute:

<SeekBar
    android:id="@+id/yourSeekBar"
    android:progressDrawable="@drawable/seekbar_progress"
    android:thumb="@drawable/seekbar_thumb"
    android:paddingTop="@dimen/your_topPadding"
    android:paddingBottom="@dimen/your_bottomPadding" />

Another possibility: make a custom thumb and increase its background's size by adding e.g. transparent border.

You can also use this library for more complex SeekBars.

In addition, there you have a nice tutorial describing a custom SeekBar creation.