RecyclerView Item move animation and strange behavior of on item click

Question

I created a simple RecyclerView in Java and implemented item click handling in the adapter's onBindViewHolder method with this action that the clicked item moves to position 0.

@Override
public void onBindViewHolder(@NonNull MyViewHolder holder, int position) {
        int pos = holder.getBindingAdapterPosition();
        ExamItem examItem = examList.get(pos);
        holder.examName.setText(examItem.getName());
        holder.itemView.setOnClickListener(v -> {
            holder.itemView.setBackgroundColor(Color.RED); // just for testing
            // Toast.makeText(v.getContext(), "pos: "+pos, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
            if (pos > 0 && pos < getItemCount()) {
                examList.remove(pos);
                examList.add(0, examItem);
                notifyItemMoved(pos, 0);
            }
        });
    }

And this is its implementation:

    // Activity or Fragment
    private List<ExamItem> ExamItems = new ArrayList<>();

    for (int i=0; i<200; i++){
        ExamItems.add(new ExamItem("index = "+i));
    }

    LinearLayoutManager llm = new LinearLayoutManager(requireContext(),LinearLayoutManager.VERTICAL,false);
    recyclerView.setLayoutManager(llm);
    RecyclerView.ItemAnimator itemAnimator = new DefaultItemAnimator();
    itemAnimator.setMoveDuration(250);
    recyclerView.setItemAnimator(itemAnimator);

    MyAdapter myAdapter = new MyAdapter(ExamItems);
    recyclerView.setAdapter(myAdapter);

It almost works but has several issues.

The move animation behaves strangely - it shouldn't change the positions of the next views, but rather the previous views. When calling notifyItemMoved(from, to), it appears to behave as if it inserts a new item at position 0 (off-screen) and removes the selected item. I expected the previous items to shift down by one position instead.
click on the first visible view (not 0 position of recyclerview) is not working. or sometimes it work with strange animation. removing its above items and inserting after the first visible item without any move animation.
Just for testing the click method, I modified the selected item background. It worked but it changes background color of similar items too. For example if 10 items are visible and I click on 3rd item them background of 13, 23, ... items change.
How do I make the moving item appear in front of other items? The default behavior appears to place it behind other items during the animation.

C.F.G · Accepted Answer · 2025-10-18 04:29:20Z

0

Questions 1 and 4 are duplicate:

Answer of Q1: Inserting RecyclerView items at zero position - always stay scrolled to top

Answer of Q4: How to fix RecyclerView shuffling issue:

overriding these two methods in Adapter will solve the shuffle issue.

@Override
public long getItemId(int position) {
return position; // or item id
}

@Override
public int getItemViewType(int position) {
return position; // or item id
}

answered Oct 18 at 4:29

C.F.G

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2 Comments

Pawel yesterday

This is a hack and not a proper solution. Doing this actually prevents the "recycling" part of "RecyclerView" from working properly. And at in case of getItemViewType leads to a memory leak. One of the comments in answer you quoted points that out.

C.F.G 22 hours ago

So, what is the proper solution?

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