 <p>I was having the same issue of the whole list view highlighting, when using a color as the background. Curiously this only happened below api 11. </p> <p>Solution was to use a solid shape drawable to wrap the colour:</p> <p>list_selector_shaped_background_press.xml</p> <pre><code>&lt;shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" &gt; &lt;solid android:color="@color/list_selector_pressed"/&gt; &lt;/shape&gt; </code></pre> <p>List_selector_background.xml</p> <pre><code>&lt;selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" &gt; &lt;item android:state_window_focused="false" android:drawable="@android:color/transparent" /&gt; &lt;!-- Even though these two point to the same resource, have two states so the drawable will invalidate itself when coming out of pressed state. --&gt; &lt;item android:state_focused="true" android:state_enabled="false" android:state_pressed="true" android:drawable="@drawable/list_selector_background_disabled" /&gt; &lt;item android:state_focused="true" android:state_enabled="false" android:drawable="@drawable/list_selector_background_disabled" /&gt; &lt;!-- this has to be in a shaped drawable otherwise the whole list is highlighted selects --&gt; &lt;item android:state_focused="true" android:state_pressed="true" android:drawable="@drawable/list_selector_shaped_background_pressed" /&gt; &lt;item android:state_focused="false" android:state_pressed="true" android:drawable="@drawable/list_selector_shaped_background_pressed" /&gt; &lt;item android:state_focused="true" android:drawable="@drawable/list_selector_background_focus" /&gt; &lt;/selector&gt; </code></pre>