Converting a view to Bitmap without displaying it in Android?

there is a way to do this. you have to create a Bitmap and a Canvas and call view.draw(canvas);

here is the code:

public static Bitmap loadBitmapFromView(View v) {
    Bitmap b = Bitmap.createBitmap( v.getLayoutParams().width, v.getLayoutParams().height, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);                
    Canvas c = new Canvas(b);
    v.layout(v.getLeft(), v.getTop(), v.getRight(), v.getBottom());
    v.draw(c);
    return b;
}

if the view wasn’t displayed before the size of it will be zero. Its possible to measure it like this:

if (v.getMeasuredHeight() <= 0) {
    v.measure(LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
    Bitmap b = Bitmap.createBitmap(v.getMeasuredWidth(), v.getMeasuredHeight(), Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);
    Canvas c = new Canvas(b);
    v.layout(0, 0, v.getMeasuredWidth(), v.getMeasuredHeight());
    v.draw(c);
    return b;
}

EDIT: according to this post, Passing WRAP_CONTENT as value to makeMeasureSpec() doesn’t to do any good (although for some view classes it does work), and the recommended method is:

// Either this
int specWidth = MeasureSpec.makeMeasureSpec(parentWidth, MeasureSpec.AT_MOST);
// Or this
int specWidth = MeasureSpec.makeMeasureSpec(0 /* any */, MeasureSpec.UNSPECIFIED);
view.measure(specWidth, specWidth);
int questionWidth = view.getMeasuredWidth();