# Customizing MessageListView Scrolling Behavior
## Introduction
By default our `MessageListView` disables scrolling behavior when there's a dialog present, specifically an instance of the `DialogFragment` is present in the hierarchy. This is due to our default set of components, in which we show an overlay on the `MessageListView` when the user selects a `Message`. If we allowed scrolling, users could scroll with the full screen overlay shown and that is poor user experience.
To mitigate this, we've added special handlers in the `MessageListScrollHelper` class, which controls the internal scrolling behavior. Whenever a scroll occurs, the following piece of code is triggered:
```kotlin
override fun onScrollStateChanged(recyclerView: RecyclerView, newState: Int) {
super.onScrollStateChanged(recyclerView, newState)
if (disableScrollWhenShowingDialog) { // 1
stopScrollIfPopupShown(recyclerView)
}
}
private fun stopScrollIfPopupShown(recyclerView: RecyclerView) {
val fragmentManager = recyclerView.context.getFragmentManager() ?: return
val hasDialogsShown = fragmentManager.fragments.any { it is DialogFragment } // 2
if (hasDialogsShown) {
recyclerView.stopScroll() // 3
}
}
```
In the inner piece of code we check if there are any `DialogFragments` active, and if so, we stop the active scroll. It consists of three steps:
1. We first check the style-based flag, which we'll describe in a moment.
2. We check if there are any active `DialogFragment`s in the current context, which should refer to your application.
3. If `hasDialogsShown` is `true`, we tell the `RecyclerView` to stop scrolling.
However, this behavior might not be what works for your use case, but it's still the default as this is the most commonly requested behavior. But you can customize it.
## Overriding Default Scrolling Behavior
If you need to enable scrolling, regardless of dialogs in your app, you can customize the default scrolling behavior to enable scrolls even if there is a `DialogFragment` active. For example, if you have bottom-sheet-style persistent dialogs, permanent popups or your `MessageListView` lives within a `DialogFragment` itself.
To do so, you have to override a specific style attribute in the `MessageListView`, like so:
```xml
```
By adding the `streamUiDisableScrollWhenShowingDialog` flag to the `MessageListView` in your layout files, you can override the default scrolling behavior. Alternatively, you can use style transformations to update the flag programmatically, **before the View is rendered**:
```kotlin
TransformStyle.messageListItemStyleTransformer = StyleTransformer { defaultViewStyle ->
defaultViewStyle.copy(
disableScrollWhenShowingDialog = false
)
}
```
The transformers should be set before the views are rendered to make sure that the new style was applied.
Using either of these two approaches will result in a `MessageListView` which will allow scrolling even if there are dialogs currently present on the screen, as seen in the GIF below.
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This page was last updated at 2026-03-10T10:49:13.614Z.
For the most recent version of this documentation, visit [https://getstream.io/chat/docs/sdk/android/v5/ui/guides/customizing-message-list-scroll-behavior/](https://getstream.io/chat/docs/sdk/android/v5/ui/guides/customizing-message-list-scroll-behavior/).