Android: AutoCompleteTextView show suggestions when no text entered

This is documented behavior:

When threshold is less than or equals 0, a threshold of 1 is applied.

You can manually show the drop-down via showDropDown(), so perhaps you can arrange to show it when you want. Or, subclass AutoCompleteTextView and override enoughToFilter(), returning true all of time.

To make CustomAutoCompleteTextView. 1. override setThreshold,enoughToFilter,onFocusChanged method

public class CustomAutoCompleteTextView  extends AutoCompleteTextView { 

    private int myThreshold; 

    public CustomAutoCompleteTextView  (Context context) { 
        super(context); 
    } 

    public CustomAutoCompleteTextView  (Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle) { 
        super(context, attrs, defStyle); 
    } 

    public CustomAutoCompleteTextView  (Context context, AttributeSet attrs) { 
        super(context, attrs); 
    } 
     //set threshold 0.
    public void setThreshold(int threshold) { 
        if (threshold < 0) { 
            threshold = 0; 
        } 
        myThreshold = threshold; 
    } 
    //if threshold   is 0 than return true
    public boolean enoughToFilter() { 
         return true;
        } 
    //invoke on focus 
    protected void onFocusChanged(boolean focused, int direction,
            Rect previouslyFocusedRect) {
                    //skip space and backspace 
        super.performFiltering("", 67);
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        super.onFocusChanged(focused, direction, previouslyFocusedRect);

    }

    protected void performFiltering(CharSequence text, int keyCode) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        super.performFiltering(text, keyCode);
    }

    public int getThreshold() { 
        return myThreshold; 
    } 
}

on FocusChangeListener, check

if (hasFocus) {
            tvAutoComplete.setText(" ")

in your filter, just trim this value:

filter { it.contains(constraint.trim(), true) }

and it will show all suggestion when you focus on this view.

Seven years later, guys, the problem stays the same. Here's a class with a function which forces that stupid pop-up to show itself in any conditions. All you need to do is to set an adapter to your AutoCompleteTextView, add some data into it, and call showDropdownNow() function anytime.

Credits to @David Vávra. It's based on his code.

import android.content.Context
import android.util.AttributeSet
import android.widget.AutoCompleteTextView

class InstantAutoCompleteTextView : AutoCompleteTextView {

    constructor(context: Context) : super(context)

    constructor(context: Context?, attrs: AttributeSet?) : super(context, attrs)

    constructor(context: Context?, attrs: AttributeSet?, defStyleAttr: Int) : super(context, attrs, defStyleAttr)

    override fun enoughToFilter(): Boolean {
        return true
    }

    fun showDropdownNow() {
        if (adapter != null) {
            // Remember a current text
            val savedText = text

            // Set empty text and perform filtering. As the result we restore all items inside of
            // a filter's internal item collection.
            setText(null, true)

            // Set back the saved text and DO NOT perform filtering. As the result of these steps
            // we have a text shown in UI, and what is more important we have items not filtered
            setText(savedText, false)

            // Move cursor to the end of a text
            setSelection(text.length)

            // Now we can show a dropdown with full list of options not filtered by displayed text
            performFiltering(null, 0)
        }
    }
}

For me, It is :

 autoCompleteText.setThreshold(0);

do the trick.