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.
This is a temporary fix. Just add: app:itemTextColor="@android:color/transparent" That'll make it whatever the background color is, appearing disabled. It does make the icon look elevated.
I'd recommend to implement it by yourself as sanf0rd gave in his answer. But AppCompatImageView is not working for me. I've changed it to ImageView. And changed getChildAt to findViewById.
I wanted to remove both the shift animation and the labels and none of the solutions here worked well for me, so here's the one I built based on everything I learned here:
public void removeLabels(@IdRes int... menuItemIds) {
getViewTreeObserver().addOnPreDrawListener(new ViewTreeObserver.OnPreDrawListener() {
@Override public boolean onPreDraw() {
getViewTreeObserver().removeOnPreDrawListener(this);
// this only needs to be calculated once for an unchecked item, it'll be the same value for all items
ViewGroup uncheckedItem = findFirstUncheckedItem(menuItemIds);
View icon = uncheckedItem.getChildAt(0);
int iconTopMargin = ((LayoutParams) uncheckedItem.getChildAt(0).getLayoutParams()).topMargin;
int desiredTopMargin = (uncheckedItem.getHeight() - uncheckedItem.getChildAt(0).getHeight()) / 2;
int itemTopPadding = desiredTopMargin - iconTopMargin;
for (int id : menuItemIds) {
ViewGroup item = findViewById(id);
// remove the label
item.removeViewAt(1);
// and then center the icon
item.setPadding(item.getPaddingLeft(), itemTopPadding, item.getPaddingRight(),
item.getPaddingBottom());
}
return true;
}
});
}
@SuppressLint("RestrictedApi")
private ViewGroup findFirstUncheckedItem(@IdRes int... menuItemIds) {
BottomNavigationItemView item = findViewById(menuItemIds[0]);
int i = 1;
while (item.getItemData().isChecked()) {
item = findViewById(menuItemIds[i++]);
}
return item;
}
Just add this method to your custom BottomNavigationView and call it passing the ids of the menu items.