 <p>When items are added to a recycler view or a list view you need to notify the adapter that these changes have occurred which you aren't doing. </p> <p>In <code>onProgressUpdate</code> you'd want to call <code>adapter.notifyItemInserted(position)</code> to tell the RecyclerView to refresh. To do this you'd need a callback or a listener in your AsyncTask because it doesn't have a reference to your adapter, and it shouldn't.</p> <p>See here for all the notify calls you have the ability to use: <a href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v7/widget/RecyclerView.Adapter.html" rel="nofollow">https://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v7/widget/RecyclerView.Adapter.html</a></p>