4.1 RecyclerViews

Lists are one of the most ubiquitous layouts that can be found in any mobile app. All of the screenshots below show different usages of a list-like layout. In Facebook, lists are used to display each post in the news feed and allow a user to engage with the post through likes and comments. In Podbean, each cell in the list is clickable and leads the user to the specific podcast's page. Finally, in Venmo, the list just displays information on past transactions with some user interactions supported.

RecyclerView makes it easy to efficiently display large sets of data. You supply the data and define how each item looks, and the RecyclerView library dynamically creates the elements when they're needed.

As the name implies, RecyclerView recycles those individual elements. When an item scrolls off the screen, RecyclerView doesn't destroy its view. Instead, RecyclerView reuses the view for new items that have scrolled onscreen. This reuse vastly improves performance, improving your app's responsiveness and reducing power consumption (more on this in the next section, 4.2 RecyclerView Performance).