Is it possible to perform view updates outside the main user thread?

In Android, UI updates must be performed only on the main (UI) thread because only it has access to UI elements. Attempting to update the view from a background thread will throw an exception (e.g., CalledFromWrongThreadException).

However, you can initiate UI updates from another thread using special mechanisms that post tasks to the main thread:

• runOnUiThread(Runnable) — a method of Activity to execute code on the UI thread.
• Handler associated with the main Looper.
• View.post(Runnable) — schedules code to run on the UI thread.

Example:

new Thread(() -> {
    // Background work
    runOnUiThread(() -> {
        // UI update
        textView.setText("Updated from background thread");
    });
}).start();

Thus, direct updates outside the main thread are not allowed, but tasks can be posted to the main thread for execution.