Animate change of view background color on Android

You can use new Property Animation Api for color animation:

int colorFrom = getResources().getColor(R.color.red);
int colorTo = getResources().getColor(R.color.blue);
ValueAnimator colorAnimation = ValueAnimator.ofObject(new ArgbEvaluator(), colorFrom, colorTo);
colorAnimation.setDuration(250); // milliseconds
colorAnimation.addUpdateListener(new AnimatorUpdateListener() {

    @Override
    public void onAnimationUpdate(ValueAnimator animator) {
        textView.setBackgroundColor((int) animator.getAnimatedValue());
    }

});
colorAnimation.start();

For backward compatibility with Android 2.x use Nine Old Androids library from Jake Wharton.

The getColor method was deprecated in Android M, so you have two choices:

• If you use the support library, you need to replace the getColor calls with:

  ContextCompat.getColor(this, R.color.red);
  

• if you don't use the support library, you need to replace the getColor calls with:

  getColor(R.color.red);
  

I ended up figuring out a (pretty good) solution for this problem!

You can use a TransitionDrawable to accomplish this. For example, in an XML file in the drawable folder you could write something like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<transition xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <!-- The drawables used here can be solid colors, gradients, shapes, images, etc. -->
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/original_state" />
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/new_state" />
</transition>

Then, in your XML for the actual View you would reference this TransitionDrawable in the android:background attribute.

At this point you can initiate the transition in your code on-command by doing:

TransitionDrawable transition = (TransitionDrawable) viewObj.getBackground();
transition.startTransition(transitionTime);

Or run the transition in reverse by calling:

transition.reverseTransition(transitionTime);

See Roman's answer for another solution using the Property Animation API, which wasn't available at the time this answer was originally posted.