Remove empty icon space/left padding from Settings

[gupta-anmol]

Summary:

There's empty space before every preference in the Settings page.
This may be due to the PR for issue #3465.

Screen-shots:

This is how it looked before.

This is how it looks now.

Would you like to work on the issue?

No, feel free to take it up.

[macgills]

Not an issue, just how settings screen works, see docs

[sivaraam]

I was about open an issue for the same reason. It kind of feels weird seeing the Settings page this way. I've never seen any Settings page like this with lots of space to the left and in between settings. See below screenshots:

It really seems like it's wasting a lot of space when I scroll through it in my device (Samsung SM-J111F). Couldn't we reduce the amount of space this takes?

[macgills]

apparently we can use app:iconSpaceReserved="false"? I suppose go for it if it still looks alright, I was hesitant to do it because <*Preference elements have no attributes like padding/margin

[sivaraam]

Just wanted to share another issue that I noted with the extra space. If you observe the following screenshot closely, you would notice weird white dots (in dark theme) corresponding to each setting.

I'm wondering why they're shown. 🤔

[macgills]

We could use layoutInspector to expose the underlying view hierarchy and what these views are? Kiwix , which is my latest dark mode/prefs screen experience, is unfortunately not using androidx preferences and has a DayNight theme driven night mode, not much similarity

[sivaraam]

We could use layoutInspector to expose the underlying view hierarchy and what these views are?

I'm not familiar with this. Let me know how I could help with this.

[macgills]

Click this with the app running on the screen you want to inspect and you get to see what the views actually are along with their attributes
Ignore the custom key binding I have for it.

[sivaraam]

Ok. This is what I get when inspecting the Settings screen:

[macgills]

Perhaps recheck that after this issue is addressed, with any luck it will just disappear. If it doesn't we will make a new issue

[madhurgupta10]

apparently we can use app:iconSpaceReserved="false"? I suppose go for it if it still looks alright, I was hesitant to do it because <*Preference elements have no attributes like padding/margin

@macgills I think iconSpaceReserved is only available on API 26+

[sivaraam]

@macgills I think iconSpaceReserved is only available on API 26+

So, that's why it didn't work in my device (API 22) when I tried using it. 🤔

[macgills]

it has the app: prefix, it is backported by the androidx libraries. Ye must have been using android: prefix which uses the platform implementation

[sivaraam]

I did use the app: prefix.

This diff captures what I tried:

diff --git app/src/main/res/xml/preferences.xml app/src/main/res/xml/preferences.xml
index e58dbefd6..b8af50b10 100644
--- app/src/main/res/xml/preferences.xml
+++ app/src/main/res/xml/preferences.xml
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
   xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">

     <PreferenceCategory
+      app:iconSpaceReserved="false"
       android:title="@string/preference_category_appearance">

         <ListPreference
@@ -17,6 +18,7 @@
     </PreferenceCategory>

     <PreferenceCategory
+      app:iconSpaceReserved="false"
       android:title="@string/preference_category_general">

         <SwitchPreference
@@ -75,6 +77,7 @@
     </PreferenceCategory>

     <PreferenceCategory
+      app:iconSpaceReserved="false"
       android:title="@string/preference_category_privacy">

         <MultiSelectListPreference
@@ -91,6 +94,7 @@
           Do not reuse this key unless you revive the same feature with the changes mentioned at #1599.-->

     <PreferenceCategory
+      app:iconSpaceReserved="false"
       android:title="@string/preference_category_feedback">

         <Preference