Develop Reference

How to change style of PreferenceThemeOverlay / PreferenceFragmentCompat

I worked myself thru the AndroidFundamtentals Tutorial 09.2 (App Settings) but I couldn't find a working solution for my problem.
I want to change the style (backgroundcolor) of the Settings-Fragment in my app.
That's what I have coded in the styles.xml so far:
<style name="AppThemeWithActionBar" parent="Theme.AppCompat.DayNight.DarkActionBar">
<item name="colorPrimary">#color/cr_blue_dark2</item>
<item name="colorPrimaryDark">#color/cr_blue_dark</item>
<item name="colorAccent">#color/cr_green</item>
<!-- more styles-->
<item name="preferenceTheme">#style/AppTheme.SettingsScreen</item>
</style>
<style name="AppTheme.SettingsScreen" parent="PreferenceThemeOverlay">
<item name="backgroundColor">#color/cr_black</item>
<item name="background">#color/cr_black</item> <!--one of these should make the background black-->
</style>
This code does not change the background color of the Settings fragment.
If you need more code just write an comment. :)

I just found the solution / mistake.
The parent of the style AppThemeWithActionBar is wrong.
It changes the background to light.
Change the title of the style like this:
<style name="AppThemeWithActionBar" parent="Theme.MaterialComponents">
Also change the theme of the activity in the Manifest.xml file.

Is it possible to change the ActionBar Colour in android?

I have been searching the net and so far either no solution or a very lengthy process.
All I want to be able to do is change the colour of my action bar and the menu that pops down to red.
I do not want to change anything else.
I would really appreciate if someone could tell me a way to do it, if there is one.
Thanks

Yes, You can but, you have to modify your resources, try the following link:
http://jgilfelt.github.io/android-actionbarstylegenerator/
The above link is used to edit actionbar colors and menu colors. Just you have to pick the colors and styles. after choosing just download the files and place in your project. I hope it will help you.

Yes its possible.. See this page will help you..
https://developer.android.com/training/basics/actionbar/styling.html

This can be done in you application theme.
This is what I had pre lollipop.
in styles.xml
<resources>
<color name="WhiteColor">#FFFFFF</color>
<color name="DarkBlueColor">#0085C3</color>
<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/ActionBarStyle</item>
</style>
<style name="ActionBarStyle" parent="#android:style/Widget.Holo.ActionBar">
<item name="android:background">#color/DarkBlueColor</item>
<item name="android:titleTextStyle">#style/ActionBarTitleStyle</item>
<item name="android:icon">#drawable/ic_action_nav_icon</item>
</style>
<style name="ActionBarTitleStyle" parent="#android:style/TextAppearance.Holo.Widget.ActionBar.Title">
<item name="android:textColor">#color/WhiteColor</item>
</style>
</resources>
in your manifest.xml make sure your app uses your personal theme
<application
...
android:theme="#style/AppTheme" >
...
</application>

Styling the popup menu in Android 5.0

I'm making my app ready for Android 5.0, I'm using the latest compatibility library, here is what my style looks like.
<resources>
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="colorPrimary">#color/theme_accent</item>
<item name="colorAccent">#color/theme_accent_secondary</item>
</style>
<style name="AppThemeDark" parent="Theme.AppCompat">
<item name="colorPrimary">#color/theme_accent</item>
<item name="colorAccent">#color/theme_accent_secondary</item>
</style>
</resources>
(The ActionBar color is being set programmatically.)
Now, I want the overflow/popup menu to have the dark background like it had in the holo implementation, but I can't get it to work, here is what it looks like:
I have tried setting the popupMenuStyle but it didn't work.
How can I make the popup menu darker?

Stop using the ActionBar. If you want a ToolBar to be set up like an ActionBar, follow this guide on the android-developers blog.
It actually mentions your use case at Dark Action Bar and provides this code:
<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
android:layout_height=”wrap_content”
android:layout_width=”match_parent”
android:minHeight=”#dimen/triple_height_toolbar”
app:theme="#style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Dark.ActionBar"
app:popupTheme="#style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light" />

Not a full answer but what I found so far:
In past versions you needed to specify a drawable (Check https://github.com/StylingAndroid/StylingActionBar code and tutorials)
Apparently, now that is a color. To modify it you need to do specify the following theme:
<resources xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Material.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="android:actionBarPopupTheme">#style/popupNew</item>
</style>
<style name="popupNew" parent="android:ThemeOverlay.Material.Light">
<item name="android:colorBackground">#color/red</item>
</style>
</resources>
This works correctly if the theme applied to the app is just this.
If I add android:actionBarPopupTheme to my existing theme, it doesn't work. I am trying to figure out why.

Solved my problem by using this style:
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="colorPrimary">#color/theme_accent</item>
<item name="colorAccent">#color/theme_accent_secondary</item>
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/AbStyle</item>
<item name="actionModeBackground">#color/actionmode_bg</item>
</style>
<style name="AbStyle" parent="Widget.AppCompat.Toolbar">
<item name="elevation">2dp</item>
<item name="displayOptions">homeAsUp|showTitle</item>
<!--showHome-->
</style>
<style name="AppThemeDark" parent="Theme.AppCompat">
<item name="colorAccent">#color/theme_accent_secondary</item>
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/AbStyle</item>
</style>
I had to use Widget.AppCompat.Toolbar as the parent actionBarStyle

Add the property popupTheme to your toolbar:
<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
android:id="#+id/toolbar"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="#color/color_primary"
app:theme="#style/Theme.AppCompat.Light"
app:popupTheme="#style/Theme.AppCompat" />
Or define a new style for your toolbar:
<style name="MyToolBarStyle" parent="Widget.AppCompat.Toolbar">
<item name="android:background">#color/green</item>
<item name="popupTheme">#style/Theme.AppCompat.Light</item>
<item name="theme">#style/Theme.AppCompat</item>
</style>

This question has already been answered for styling via XML, but I'm adding an explanation here of how to work out the solution to this and similar styling questions yourself.
First, this is the solution when using AppCompat. To your App's style.xml add actionBarPopupTheme to your theme:
<style name="Theme.MyTheme" parent="#style/Base.Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
...other stuff here
<item name="actionBarPopupTheme">#style/Theme.MyTheme.ActionBarPopupTheme</item>
</style>
<style name="Theme.MyTheme.ActionBarPopupTheme" parent="#style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light">
<item name="android:textColor">#android:color/white</item>
<item name="android:background">#android:color/black</item>
</style>
Here's the steps I took to arrive at this solution (it takes a bit of detective work as the Android documentation is poor):
Open your App's style.xml in Android Studio
On the line where you App's theme is defined, put your screen cursor in the parent theme (e.g. click in #style/Base.Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar) then press F4. This should take you to the source code for the style in the appcompat library.
Within this style I saw this line:
< item name="actionBarPopupTheme">#style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light< /item>
This looked like a possible place to change the theme of the popup. I searched for "actionBarPopupTheme" in the poor
Android developers documentation and found "Reference to a theme that should be used to
inflate popups shown by widgets in the action bar". So this was worth playing with.
I copied the appcompat line containing "actionBarPopupTheme" to my style.xml then in this line replaced the item's theme reference (the bit in bold above) with Theme.MyTheme.ActionBarPopupTheme.
In my style.xml I created my new style named Theme.MyTheme.ActionBarPopupTheme. I used the same parent that was used in the style I copied from the appcompat source (the bit in bold above).
To ensure my new popup style was working, I changed the parent style to ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Dark then ran and tested the code on a device. The popup style changed, so now I knew my overriding of actionBarPopupTheme was the correct thing to do. Then I changed back to ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light.
The next challenge is to work out what item names to override in Theme.MyTheme.ActionBarPopupTheme. I changed the text and background colours. To find the correct item names that change the style of something can be tricky in some cases. One way to find less obvious style item names is to look through the style definitions in the appcompat xml file (the one you opened when pressing F4 in the 2nd step above), continually descending into parent styles (F4 again!) until you find something that may do what you want. Google searches will help here too.

Android custom theme

Hello I'm making a custom theme for my app. I want to have a custom ActionBar and background for the rest of the app (below the ActionBar). I'm wondering how to do the background. Right now I have:
<style name="MyTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/dActionBar</item>
</style>
<style name="dActionBar" parent="#android:style/Widget.Holo.ActionBar">
<item name="android:background">#4C721D</item>
<item name="android:textColor">#FFFFFF</item>
</style>
Would I just have to do <item name-"android:background"></item> in MyTheme or would I have to create another style? After I create this do I need to put it in the res/styles folder? Also what are the API restrictions on this, if any?

Don't forget to apply your theme to your application in your AndroidManifest.xml.
<application android:theme="#style/CustomActivityTheme" ... />
You can find all the information about styling the Actionbar here.
To style your ActionBar with a nice Holo-look, try this website
Hope this helps!

Try to use below code in your Style.xml file
<resources>
<style name="Theme.Sample" parent="Theme.AppCompat">
<item name="android:colorBackground">#color/primary_material_dark</item>
<item name="actionBarTheme">#color/colorGray</item>
</style>
</resources>
Just need to use android:colorBackground as a name of item to define the background color like as below:
<item name="android:colorBackground">#color/primary_material_dark</item>
Hope you get your answer,Thanks.

What do i have to do to make a style for an activity that just affects the textviews?

Actually i have two questions.
Question 1.
I have made a style for a TextView
http://pastebin.com/q9hj26JX (Couldn't paste xml code here, it just went invisible)
To add this style i do:
http://pastebin.com/QdGmjQ0z
But instead of doint this, there must be a way to add this style to all the TextView in an activity? I have seen something like "Widget.TextView", but i have not found any good tutorial or documentation on it yet.
So can someone please give me an example, if it is possible.
Now for question number 2:
I don't get any intellisense while creating styles. Does it not exist for style creation?
Thanks in advance!

Please red about THEMES in android http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html
The THEME is a style for whole activity and sets in Android Manifest.
Hope, it help you!
UPDATE:
Try this code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<style name="small_describing_text" parent="#android:style/TextAppearance.Medium">
<item name="android:layout_width">fill_parent</item>
<item name="android:layout_height">wrap_content</item>
<item name="android:gravity">center_horizontal</item>
<item name="android:layout_marginTop">0dp</item>
<item name="android:textSize">10dp</item>
<item name="android:textColor">#FF0000</item>
</style>
<style name="MyTheme" parent="android:Theme.Light">
<item name="android:textViewStyle">#style/small_describing_text</item>
</style>
</resources>
Don't forget add this theme in Manifest for your activity!!!

You might want to have a look at my blogpost where I've explained theming and styling: http://aproblemlikemaria.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/theming-and-styling-in-android/