In order to get a view to slowly fade in or out of view, use an ObjectAnimator. As seen in the code below, set a duration using .setDuration(millis) where the millis parameter is the duration (in milliseconds) of the animation. In the below code, the views will fade in / out over 500 milliseconds, or 1/2 second. To start the ObjectAnimator‘s animation, call .start(). Once the animation is complete, onAnimationEnd(Animator animation) is called. Here is a good place to set your view’s visibility to View.GONE or View.VISIBLE.

import android.animation.Animator;
import android.animation.AnimatorListenerAdapter;
import android.animation.ValueAnimator;

void fadeOutAnimation(View viewToFadeOut) {
    ObjectAnimator fadeOut = ObjectAnimator.ofFloat(viewToFadeOut, "alpha", 1f, 0f);

    fadeOut.setDuration(500);
    fadeOut.addListener(new AnimatorListenerAdapter() {
        @Override
        public void onAnimationEnd(Animator animation) {
            // We wanna set the view to GONE, after it's fade out. so it actually disappear from the layout & don't take up space.
            viewToFadeOut.setVisibility(View.GONE);
        }
    });

    fadeOut.start();
}

void fadeInAnimation(View viewToFadeIn) {
    ObjectAnimator fadeIn = ObjectAnimator.ofFloat(viewToFadeIn, "alpha", 0f, 1f);
    fadeIn.setDuration(500);

    fadeIn.addListener(new AnimatorListenerAdapter() {
        @Override
        public void onAnimationStar(Animator animation) {
            // We wanna set the view to VISIBLE, but with alpha 0. So it appear invisible in the layout.
            viewToFadeIn.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
            viewToFadeIn.setAlpha(0);
        }
    });

    fadeIn.start();
}