Is there a way to prevent the listview from scrolling to its top position when its adapter's data is changed?

As you pointed out yourself, the call to 'clear()' causes the position to be reset to the top.

Fiddling with scroll-position, etc. is a bit of a hack to get this working.

If your CustomListAdapter subclasses from ArrayAdapter, this could be the issue:

The call to clear(), calls 'notifyDataSetChanged()'. You can prevent this:

mListAdapter.setNotifyOnChange(false); // Prevents 'clear()' from clearing/resetting the listview
mListAdapter.clear();
mListAdapter.addAll(data.items);
// note that a call to notifyDataSetChanged() implicitly sets the setNotifyOnChange back to 'true'!
// That's why the call 'setNotifyOnChange(false) should be called first every time (see call before 'clear()').
mListAdapter.notifyDataSetChanged(); 

I haven't tried this myself, but try it :)

Check out: Maintain/Save/Restore scroll position when returning to a ListView

Use this to save the position in the ListView before you call .clear(), .addAll(), and . notifyDataSetChanged().

int index = mList.getFirstVisiblePosition();
View v = mList.getChildAt(0);
int top = (v == null) ? 0 : v.getTop();

After updating the ListView adapter, the Listview's items will be changed and then set the new position:

mList.setSelectionFromTop(index, top);

Basically you can save you position and scroll back to it, save the ListView state or the entire application state.

Other helpful links:

Save Position: How to save and restore ListView position in Android

Save State: Android ListView y position

Regards,

Please let me know if this helps!