How to Get Touch Coordinates of Screen in Android?
In Android, the app screen is a layout that can be used to display various UI elements like TextView, Button, ImageView, etc. These UI elements are positioned according to a set of pre-defined rules and developer changes. In simple words, each bit on any app screen defines a coordinate that can be used to track UI elements as well as user touch on the screen. This is pivotal wherein an application is a gaming software and requires the user to touch the screen to perform actions. So in this article, we will show you how you could fetch the coordinates X and Y of the screen touch in Android. Follow the below steps once the IDE is ready.
Step by Step Implementation
Step 1: Create a New Project in Android Studio
To create a new project in Android Studio please refer to How to Create/Start a New Project in Android Studio. We demonstrated the application in Kotlin, so make sure you select Kotlin as the primary language while creating a New Project.
Step 2: Working with the activity_main.xml file
Navigate to the app > res > layout > activity_main.xml and add the below code to that file. Below is the code for the activity_main.xml file. Add two TextViews to display X and Y coordinates, one in each of them.
XML
<? xml version = "1.0" encoding = "utf-8" ?> < RelativeLayout xmlns:android = "http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:app = "http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" xmlns:tools = "http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:id = "@+id/relative_layout_1" android:layout_width = "match_parent" android:layout_height = "match_parent" tools:context = ".MainActivity" > < TextView android:id = "@+id/text_view_1" android:layout_width = "wrap_content" android:layout_height = "60sp" android:layout_marginTop = "50sp" android:layout_centerHorizontal = "true" android:text = "X:" android:textSize = "50sp" /> < TextView android:id = "@+id/text_view_2" android:layout_width = "wrap_content" android:layout_height = "60sp" android:layout_marginTop = "30sp" android:layout_centerHorizontal = "true" android:layout_below = "@id/text_view_1" android:text = "Y:" android:textSize = "50sp" /> </ RelativeLayout > |
Step 3: Working with the MainActivity.kt file
Go to the MainActivity.kt file and refer to the following code. Below is the code for the MainActivity.kt file. Comments are added inside the code to understand the code in more detail.
Kotlin
package org.w3wiki.touchcoordinates import android.annotation.SuppressLint import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity import android.os.Bundle import android.widget.RelativeLayout import android.widget.TextView class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() { @SuppressLint ( "ClickableViewAccessibility" , "SetTextI18n" ) override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) { super .onCreate(savedInstanceState) setContentView(R.layout.activity_main) // Declaring and initializing the // UI elements from the layout file val mRelativeLayout = findViewById<RelativeLayout>(R.id.relative_layout_1) val mTextViewX = findViewById<TextView>(R.id.text_view_1) val mTextViewY = findViewById<TextView>(R.id.text_view_2) // When relative layout is touched mRelativeLayout.setOnTouchListener { _, motionEvent -> // X and Y values are fetched val mX = motionEvent.x val mY = motionEvent.y // X and Y values are // displayed in the TextView mTextViewX.text = "X: $mX" mTextViewY.text = "Y: $mY" true } } } |
Output:
You can see that X and Y coordinates are displayed in respective TextViews.