I’m trying to build a music player app and I’ve noticed that a lot of popular streaming platforms have an impressive scrolling effect on their artist pages. When you scroll through the song list, the header image, usually featuring the artist’s photo, seems to move at a different speed compared to the rest of the content. This results in a smooth parallax effect that gives a professional look.
In my Android project, I’m using RecyclerView, but I’m having trouble figuring out how to make the header image scroll at a different speed than the list items. Ideally, the image should scroll slower than the content below it, creating a nice parallax effect.
Has anyone tried implementing this type of parallax header effect? I’d appreciate any advice on how to achieve this kind of scrolling behavior. Should I utilize a custom layout manager, or is there a more straightforward method to manage the varying scroll speeds between the header and the list?
if you go for CoordinatorLayout with CollapsingToolbarLayout, that might just do the trick! wrap your RecyclerView in a NestedScrollView and have the header img in the collapsing toolbar. it automatically takes care of the parallax effect, super easy!
Had this exact problem last year. I ended up using a custom OnScrollListener for the RecyclerView that moves the header based on scroll position. Calculate the scroll offset and apply part of that movement to your header image with setTranslationY(). Try headerImage.setTranslationY(scrollY * 0.5f) for that slower movement effect. You’ll need to tweak the multiplier until it feels right - I’ve found 0.3 to 0.7 works best depending on your design. This gives you way more control than the standard layout components and drops right into existing RecyclerView setups without breaking anything.
AppBarLayout with custom behavior worked perfectly for me. Skip the manual scroll offset calculations - just extend AppBarLayout.ScrollingViewBehavior instead. You can intercept scroll events and set different translation rates for your header components. Override onDependentViewChanged to grab the scroll distance and multiply it by whatever parallax factor you want. Way more reliable than listeners since it handles edge cases better, especially with fling gestures or fast scrolling. Header stays smooth during complex interactions and you won’t hit performance issues from constant view updates.