It’s responsible for measuring and positioning views as well as handling the view recycling policy. To tell RecyclerView how to arrange the views, you need a layout manager. This will let you quickly set up a project that uses RecyclerView so that you can see how it works and experiment with it. From Android Studio, open the File menu and select Import Sample and then type “Recycler View” in the search box. If you want a good starting point for playing around with RecyclerView, check out the sample. If you find that ListView doesn’t work for you, that’s the time to switch over to RecyclerView. Contrary to some opinions, ListView isn’t dead and you shouldn’t change all your ListViews over to RecyclerViews without reason. The simple answer is to use ListView unless you encounter one of its limitations. Given that RecyclerView can do everything that ListView can, you might be wondering when you should still use ListView. For instance, instead of assuming that you want your items vertically stacked, you supply a layout manager that handles determine how to lay out the items. RecyclerView works similarly to ListView but with a more modular architecture. Its name is a reference to the process of view recycling that we’ve discussed previously where a view that goes off screen can then be reused for a new view coming onto the screen. To solve these issues, RecyclerView was created.

For instance, animating views within ListView has a lot of challenges and there isn’t a good way to change how the items are laid out. It handles everything you need and it is efficient however, there are times when ListView doesn’t do everything you want.

If you’ve been doing Android development for some time, you’ve probably come across issues with ListView. Android User Interface Design: Implementing Material Design for Developers, 2nd Edition

Android studio recyclerview vs listview