How to make an Android Spinner with initial text "Select One"?

First, you might be interested in the prompt attribute of the Spinner class. See the picture below, "Choose a Planet" is the prompt that can be set in the XML with android:prompt="".

I was going to suggest subclassing Spinner, where you could maintain two adapters internally. One adapter that has the "Select One" option, and the other real adapter (with the actual options), then using the OnClickListener to switch the adapters before the choices dialog is shown. However, after trying implement that idea I've come to the conclusion you cannot receive OnClick events for the widget itself.

You could wrap the spinner in a different view, intercept the clicks on the view, and then tell your CustomSpinner to switch the adapter, but seems like an awful hack.

Do you really need to show "Select One"?

Lots of answers here but I'm surprised no one suggested a simple solution: Place a TextView on top of the Spinner. Set a click listener on the TextView which hides the TextView shows the Spinner, and calls spinner.performClick().

In addition, There is a simple trick to show default:

You can add a default value in your list and then add all of your collection using list.addAll(yourCollection);

Sample workable code here:

List<FuelName> fuelList = new ArrayList<FuelName>();
                    fuelList.add(new FuelName(0,"Select One"));
                    fuelList.addAll(response.body());
                    ArrayAdapter adapter = new ArrayAdapter<>(getActivity(), android.R.layout.simple_spinner_item, fuelList);
                    //fuelName.setPrompt("Select Fuel");
                    fuelName.setAdapter(adapter);

The best solution I found for this is actually not to use a Spinner but an AutoCompleteTextView. Its basically an EditText with attached Spinner to show suggestions as you type - but, with the right config, it can behave exactly as the OP wishes and more.

XML:

<com.google.android.material.textfield.TextInputLayout
                android:id="@+id/item"
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content">

            <androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatAutoCompleteTextView
                    android:id="@+id/input"
                    android:hint="Select one"
                    style="@style/AutoCompleteTextViewDropDown"/>
        </com.google.android.material.textfield.TextInputLayout>

Style:

<style name="AutoCompleteTextViewDropDown">
    <item name="android:clickable">false</item>
    <item name="android:cursorVisible">false</item>
    <item name="android:focusable">false</item>
    <item name="android:focusableInTouchMode">false</item>
    <item name="android:layout_width">match_parent</item>
    <item name="android:layout_height">wrap_content</item>
</style>

As for the adapter use the basic ArrayAdapter or extend it to make your own, but no additional customization on the adapter side is necessary. Set the adapter on the AutoCompleteTextView.

When extending SpinnerAdapter, you override two View-producing methods, getView(int, View, ViewGroup) and getDropDownView(int, View, ViewGroup). The first one supplies the View inserted into the Spinner itself; the second supplies the View in the drop-down list (as the name suggests). You can override the getView(...) so that, until an item has been selected, it displays a TextView containing a prompt; then, when you detect an item has been selected, you change it to display a TextView corresponding to that.

public class PromptingAdapter extends SpinnerAdapter {

    //... various code ...

    private boolean selectionmade = false;

    //call this method from the OnItemSelectedListener for your Spinner
    public setSelectionState(boolean b) {
        selectionmade = b;
    }

    @Override
    public View getView(int position, View recycle, ViewGroup container) {
        if(selectionmade) {
            //your existing code to supply a View for the Spinner
            //you could even put "return getDropDownView(position, recycle, container);"
        }
        else {
            View output;
            if(recycle instanceof TextView) {
                 output = recycle;
            }
            else {
                 output = new TextView();
                 //and layout stuff
            }
            output.setText(R.string.please_select_one);
            //put a string "please_select_one" in res/values/strings.xml
            return output;
        }
    }

//...
}

I also solved this problem by using the following code. Suppose you are having a list of items e.g.

ArrayList<Item> itemsArrayList = new ArrayList<Item>();
Item item1 = new Item();
item1.setId(1);
item1.setData("First Element");
Item item2 = new Item();
item2.setId(2);
Item2.setData("Second Element");
itemsArrayList.add(item1);
itemsArrayList.add(item2);

Now we have to provide the strings to spinner because spinner can not understand the object. So we will create an new array list with string items like this ->

ArrayList<String> itemStringArrayList = new ArrayList<String>();
for(Item item : itemsArrayList) {
    itemStringArrayList.add(item.getData());
}

Now we have itemStringArrayList array list with two string items. And we have to show the "Select Item" text as first item. So we have to insert an new string into the itemStringArrayList.

itemStringArrayList.add("Select Item");

Now we have an array list itemsArrayList and we want to show two elements in the drop down. But the condition here is ...If we don't select anything then Select Item should appear as first element which will not be enabled.

So we can implement this functionality like this. If you need to load the array list items into the android spinner. So you will have to use some adapter. So here i'll use the ArrayAdapter. We can use the customise adapter too.

ArrayAdapter<String> itemsArrayAdapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>(getApplicationContext(), R.layout.spinner_item, itemsArrayList){
        @Override
        public boolean isEnabled(int position) {
            if(position == 0)
            {
                return false;
            }
            else
            {
                return true;
            }
        }

        @Override
        public View getDropDownView(int position, View convertView,
                                    ViewGroup parent) {
            View view = super.getDropDownView(position, convertView, parent);
            TextView tv = (TextView) view;
            if(position == 0){
                // Set the hint text color gray
                tv.setTextColor(Color.GRAY);
            }
            else {
                tv.setTextColor(Color.BLACK);
            }
            return view;
        }
    };

itemsArrayAdapter.setDropDownViewResource(R.layout.spinner_item);
your_spinner_name.setAdapter(itemsArrayAdapter);

Here in this code. we are using the customised spinner layout i.e. R.layout.spinner_item. It's a simple text view

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TextView
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:padding="10dp"
    android:textStyle="italic"
    android:fontFamily="sans-serif-medium"
    />

We need to disable the first text in the spinner. So for the position 0 we are disabling the text. And color also we can set by overiding getDropDownView method. So in this way we will get the expected spinner.

I was facing the same problem yesterday and did not want to add a hidden item to the ArrayAdapter or use reflections, which works fine but is kind of dirty.

After reading many posts and trying around I found a solution by extending ArrayAdapter and Overriding the getView method.

import android.content.Context;
import android.support.annotation.NonNull;
import android.view.LayoutInflater;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.ViewGroup;
import android.widget.ArrayAdapter;
import android.widget.Spinner;
import android.widget.TextView;

/**
 * A SpinnerAdapter which does not show the value of the initial selection initially,
 * but an initialText.
 * To use the spinner with initial selection instead call notifyDataSetChanged().
 */
public class SpinnerAdapterWithInitialText<T> extends ArrayAdapter<T> {

    private Context context;
    private int resource;

    private boolean initialTextWasShown = false;
    private String initialText = "Please select";

    /**
     * Constructor
     *
     * @param context The current context.
     * @param resource The resource ID for a layout file containing a TextView to use when
     *                 instantiating views.
     * @param objects The objects to represent in the ListView.
     */
    public SpinnerAdapterWithInitialText(@NonNull Context context, int resource, @NonNull T[] objects) {
        super(context, resource, objects);
        this.context = context;
        this.resource = resource;
    }

    /**
     * Returns whether the user has selected a spinner item, or if still the initial text is shown.
     * @param spinner The spinner the SpinnerAdapterWithInitialText is assigned to.
     * @return true if the user has selected a spinner item, false if not.
     */
    public boolean selectionMade(Spinner spinner) {
        return !((TextView)spinner.getSelectedView()).getText().toString().equals(initialText);
    }

    /**
     * Returns a TextView with the initialText the first time getView is called.
     * So the Spinner has an initialText which does not represent the selected item.
     * To use the spinner with initial selection instead call notifyDataSetChanged(),
     * after assigning the SpinnerAdapterWithInitialText.
     */
    @Override
    public View getView(int position, View recycle, ViewGroup container) {
        if(initialTextWasShown) {
            return super.getView(position, recycle, container);
        } else {
            initialTextWasShown = true;
            LayoutInflater inflater = LayoutInflater.from(context);
            final View view = inflater.inflate(resource, container, false);

            ((TextView) view).setText(initialText);

            return view;
        }
    }
}

What Android does when initialising the Spinner, is calling getView for the selected item before calling getView for all items in T[] objects. The SpinnerAdapterWithInitialText returns a TextView with the initialText, the first time it is called. All the other times it calls super.getView which is the getView method of ArrayAdapter which is called if you are using the Spinner normally.

To find out whether the user has selected a spinner item, or if the spinner still displays the initialText, call selectionMade and hand over the spinner the adapter is assigned to.

public AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener instructorSpinnerListener = new AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener() {
    @Override
    public void onItemSelected(AdapterView << ? > adapterView, View view, int i, long l) {
        String selectedInstructorName = adapterView.getItemAtPosition(i).toString();
        if (selectedInstructorName.equals("[Select Instructor]")) {
            instructorSpinnerAdapter.clear();
            for (Offering offering: allOfferingsList)
                instructorSpinnerAdapter.add(offering);
        } else {
            instructorSpinnerAdapter.clear();
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void onNothingSelected(AdapterView<< ? > adapterView) {
        adapterView.setSelection(0);

        // Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Why?", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }
};

See the answer with lightweight and high customisable library:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/73085435/6694920

<com.innowisegroup.hintedspinner.HintedSpinner
android:id="@+id/hintedSpinner"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginHorizontal="20dp"
app:hintTextSize="24sp"
app:hintTextColor="@color/red"
app:hint="Custom hint"
app:withDivider="true"
app:dividerColor="@color/dark_green"
app:arrowDrawable="@drawable/example_arrow_4"
app:arrowTint="@color/colorAccent"
app:popupBackground="@color/light_blue"
app:items="@array/text" />

Collapsed spinner:

Expanded spinner: