 <p>Is what you want something like this?</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/R1pTh.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/R1pTh.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p> <p>If so, here is the code (works until API level 9) :</p> <p><strong>Activity:</strong></p> <pre><code>public class MainActivity extends Activity { public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_main); Spinner spinnerListOptions = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.spinner); ArrayAdapter&lt;CharSequence&gt; adapterListOptions = ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(this, R.array.string_array, R.layout.spinner_item_top); adapterListOptions.setDropDownViewResource(R.layout.spinner_item_dropdown); spinnerListOptions.setAdapter(adapterListOptions); } } </code></pre> <p><strong>spinner_item_top.xml:</strong></p> <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?&gt; &lt;TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="29dp" android:textSize="12sp" android:gravity="center"&gt; &lt;/TextView&gt; </code></pre> <p><strong>spinner_item_dropdown.xml:</strong></p> <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?&gt; &lt;TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="29dp" android:textSize="12sp" android:gravity="center"&gt; &lt;/TextView&gt; </code></pre> <p><strong>activity_main.xml:</strong></p> <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?&gt; &lt;RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent"&gt; &lt;Spinner android:id="@+id/spinner" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_centerInParent="true"/&gt; &lt;/RelativeLayout&gt; </code></pre> <p><strong>strings.xml:</strong></p> <pre><code>&lt;resources&gt; &lt;string-array name="string_array"&gt; &lt;item&gt;item 1&lt;/item&gt; &lt;item&gt;item 2&lt;/item&gt; &lt;item&gt;item 3&lt;/item&gt; &lt;/string-array&gt; &lt;/resources&gt; </code></pre>