Keep Textinputlayout hint always top
Actually, from com.google.android.material:material:1.3.0-alpha03 or higher, you can simply set app:expandedHintEnabled="false" to make it always float.
Here's a hack - programmatically add a space in the text if it's empty. However, you would then have to remove the space if it's focused, else the user will start typing with a leading whitespace. Another option is to always trim the text typed by user.
My final solution back then was to actually just set hintEnabled="false" & use a TextView on top.