Working with Toast Messages

I was working on an android application where I required some notification kind of thing. I was looking into popups but it didn’t really work out. Then I stumbled on to Toast Messages.

A toast provides simple feedback about an operation in a small popup. It only fills the amount of space required for the message and the current activity remains visible and interactive.

The Basics

First, instantiate a Toast object with one of the makeText() methods. This method takes three parameters: the application Context, the text message, and the duration for the toast. It returns a properly initialized Toast object. You can display the toast notification with show().

Context context = getApplicationContext();
CharSequence text = "Hello toast!";
int duration = Toast.LENGTH_SHORT;

Toast toast = Toast.makeText(context, text, duration);
toast.show();

The values of LENGTH_SHORT and LENGTH_LONG are 0 and 1. This means they are treated as flags rather than actual durations so I don’t think it will be possible to set the duration to anything other than these values.

Problem

I wanted to reduce the the duration of the toast message. I needed it even lesser than LENGTH_SHORT.

Solution

Stackoverflow post

Toast.cancel() can be used to shorten the duration of the toast message.

final Toast toast = Toast.makeText(ctx,
                        "This message will disappear in 1 second",
                        Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
toast.show();

Handler handler = new Handler();

handler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
        toast.cancel(); 
        }
    }, 1000); // time in milliseconds

P.S. Adding small notes is quite fun and helpful.

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