How to select an ListView item after long click?

It's possible, but just barely... I actually don't know how such a simple thing can wind up so ridiculously complicated.

The key to the answer can be found here: Android: keep blue background after ListView selection

What this boils down to is to define an additional style that is used by the ListView and setting the choice mode to AbsListView.CHOICE_MODE_SINGLE (as explained in the linked answer).

This allows you programmatically toggle the selection using Listview.setItemChecked(). However, you need to keep track of the index of the touched item in the onItemLongClick callback yourself, because ListView.setSelection() won't do that (at least ListView.getSelectedItem() will always return -1 as far as I can see).

Code (for simplicity, my fragment implements all three OnItemClickListener, OnItemLongClickListener, and ActionMode.Callback):

@Overridepublic View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState){    this.listViewAdapter = new ListViewAdapter();    this.root = (ListView)inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_bookmarks, container, false);    this.root.setAdapter(this.listViewAdapter);    this.root.setOnItemClickListener(this);    this.root.setOnItemLongClickListener(this);    this.root.setChoiceMode(AbsListView.CHOICE_MODE_SINGLE);    return this.root;}@Overridepublic boolean onItemLongClick(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int position, long id) {    if(this.cabMode != null)        return false;    this.selectedPosition = position;    this.root.setItemChecked(position, true);    this.root.setOnItemClickListener(null);    this.cabMode = getActivity().startActionMode(this);    return true;}

And finally, if you want to get rid of the selection when the CAB is closed:

@Overridepublic void onDestroyActionMode(ActionMode mode) {    cabMode = null;    this.root.setItemChecked(this.selectedPosition, false);    this.selectedPosition = -1;    this.root.setOnItemClickListener(this);}

Registering and unregistering the OnItemClickListener makes sure that while the CAB is active you won't accidentally trigger the action usually associated with the item (like opening a detail view).

My solution:(trick)

final ListView lvMain = (ListView) activity.findViewById(R.id.listTHEMES);lvMain.setChoiceMode(ListView.CHOICE_MODE_MULTIPLE);lvMain.setItemsCanFocus(false);ArrayAdapter<String> adapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>(activity,            android.R.layout.simple_list_item_multiple_choice, ArrayTheme);lvMain.setAdapter(adapter);lvMain.setOnItemLongClickListener(new AdapterView.OnItemLongClickListener() {    @Override    public boolean onItemLongClick(AdapterView<?> arg0, View arg1,                                       int pos, long id) {        // TODO Auto-generated method stub        if (lvMain.isItemChecked(pos)){lvMain.setItemChecked(pos,false);}else{lvMain.setItemChecked(pos,true);}        Log.v(LOG_TAG,"long clicked pos: " + pos);        //lvMain.setSelection();        return true;    }});lvMain.setOnItemClickListener(new AdapterView.OnItemClickListener() {    public void onItemClick(AdapterView<?> parent, View view,                                int position, long id) {        //Log.d(LOG_TAG, "itemClick: position = " + position + ", id = " + id);        if (lvMain.isItemChecked(position)){lvMain.setItemChecked(position,false);}else{lvMain.setItemChecked(position,true);}    }});