Remove BottomNavigationView labels

I hope I am not too late to the party here.

But as of Design Support Library 28.0.0-alpha1 you can use the property

app:labelVisibilityMode="unlabeled"

you can use other values "auto", "labeled" and "selected" as well.

Would you want to this style ?

If so, I recommend you try BottomNavigationViewEx.

Unfortunately this first version of BottomNavigationView came with a lot of limitations. And for now you can't remove the titles just using the support design API. So to solve this limitation while google doesn't implement it, you can do (using reflection):

1. Set the titles empty in from bottom_navigation_menu.xml file.

2. Extends the BottomNavigationView:

    public class MyBottomNavigationView extends BottomNavigationView {

      public MyBottomNavigationView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
          super(context, attrs);
          centerMenuIcon();
      }

      private void centerMenuIcon() {
          BottomNavigationMenuView menuView = getBottomMenuView();

          if (menuView != null) {
              for (int i = 0; i < menuView.getChildCount(); i++) {
                BottomNavigationItemView menuItemView = (BottomNavigationItemView) menuView.getChildAt(i);

                AppCompatImageView icon = (AppCompatImageView) menuItemView.getChildAt(0);

                FrameLayout.LayoutParams params = (LayoutParams) icon.getLayoutParams();
                params.gravity = Gravity.CENTER;

                menuItemView.setShiftingMode(true);
              }
          }
      }

      private BottomNavigationMenuView getBottomMenuView() {
          Object menuView = null;
          try {
              Field field = BottomNavigationView.class.getDeclaredField("mMenuView");
              field.setAccessible(true);
              menuView = field.get(this);
          } catch (NoSuchFieldException | IllegalAccessException e) {
              e.printStackTrace();
          }

          return (BottomNavigationMenuView) menuView;
      }
    }

3. Add to the layout.xml this customView

For more details I have implemented this on Github

1. Set android:title=""; in menu/abc.xml

2. Create the below helper class which is using reflection

import android.support.design.internal.BottomNavigationMenuView;
import android.support.design.widget.BottomNavigationView;
import android.support.v7.widget.AppCompatImageView;
import android.util.Log;
import android.view.Gravity;
import android.widget.FrameLayout;

import java.lang.reflect.Field;

public class BottomNavigationViewHelper {
    public static void disableShiftMode(BottomNavigationView view) {
        BottomNavigationMenuView menuView = (BottomNavigationMenuView) view.getChildAt(0);
        try {
            Field shiftingMode = menuView.getClass().getDeclaredField("mShiftingMode");
            shiftingMode.setAccessible(true);
            shiftingMode.setBoolean(menuView, false);
            shiftingMode.setAccessible(false);
            for (int i = 0; i < menuView.getChildCount(); i++) {
                BottomNavigationItemView item = (BottomNavigationItemView) menuView.getChildAt(i);
                //noinspection RestrictedApi
                item.setShiftingMode(false);
                item.setPadding(0, 15, 0, 0);
                // set once again checked value, so view will be updated
                //noinspection RestrictedApi
                item.setChecked(item.getItemData().isChecked());
            }
        } catch (NoSuchFieldException e) {
            Log.e("BNVHelper", "Unable to get shift mode field", e);
        } catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
            Log.e("BNVHelper", "Unable to change value of shift mode", e);
        }
    }
} 

3. In your main activity, add these lines:

mBottomNav = (BottomNavigationView) findViewById(R.id.navigation);
BottomNavigationViewHelper.disableShiftMode(mBottomNav);

Reflectionless approach:

private void removeTextLabel(@NonNull BottomNavigationView bottomNavigationView, @IdRes int menuItemId) {
    View view = bottomNavigationView.findViewById(menuItemId);
    if (view == null) return;
    if (view instanceof MenuView.ItemView) {
        ViewGroup viewGroup = (ViewGroup) view;
        int padding = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < viewGroup.getChildCount(); i++) {
            View v = viewGroup.getChildAt(i);
            if (v instanceof ViewGroup) {
                padding = v.getHeight();
                viewGroup.removeViewAt(i);
            }
        }
        viewGroup.setPadding(view.getPaddingLeft(), (viewGroup.getPaddingTop() + padding) / 2, view.getPaddingRight(), view.getPaddingBottom());
    }
}