Where to put a spinner on android next to a search box

Question

I am trying to design a screen with a spinner drop-down to select a term of school, and then a search box to search in, but I cant seem to figure out how to get everything to look nice together.

To me no matter what I do it all looks squished. I really don't want to put the spinner on its own line though. Any advice?

Answer 1

A few tips:

• Use standard margins and padding. Paradoxically, one of the reasons why the spinner looks squished is because it's pushed up against the right side of the screen. Try giving it the same margin as you gave on the left.
• Consider placing the search bar in the action bar and removing the title.
• Consider extending the search field to include the eye-glass.
• Consider using the standard card look for the search bar. Here's my take on it:

• Make the suggestions full-width. It'll be less cramped and there'll be more space to show the suggestion text. From the Material design guidelines:

Google has a whole page on search in its guidelines, it might be useful to you.