Develop Reference

Changing ActionBar Height

I changed the ActionBar height in themes.xml with this
<item name="actionBarSize">30dp</item>
The height of ActionBar changes but then it throws the alignment of my first control off.
Before changing ActionBar height:
After changing Actionbar height
The first Spinner control is aligned to the top of the Layout
<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
tools:context=".fragments.MainFragment">
<Spinner
android:id="#+id/spSessionsMain"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="30dp"
android:background="#drawable/background_spinner"
android:spinnerMode="dropdown"
app:layout_constraintLeft_toRightOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintRight_toLeftOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
/>
I'm at a complete loss.

This is happening because the Action bar has a min height of 64dp by default defined in its style :
ActionBar style : (Just for reference don't copy paste this in your theme)
<style name="Widget.MaterialComponents.Light.ActionBar.Solid" parent="Widget.AppCompat.Light.ActionBar.Solid">
<item name="titleTextStyle">?attr/textAppearanceHeadline6</item>
<item name="subtitleTextStyle">?attr/textAppearanceSubtitle1</item>
<!-- Overrides minimum height in landscape to avoid headline6 and subtitle1 height concerns. -->
<item name="android:minHeight">#dimen/mtrl_toolbar_default_height</item>
<item name="maxButtonHeight">#dimen/mtrl_toolbar_default_height</item>
</style>
If you want to remove the gap between your spinner and the action bar you can override the min height of the bar. like this :
<style name="CustomActionBar" parent="Widget.MaterialComponents.Light.ActionBar.Solid">
<item name="android:minHeight">30dp</item>
</style>
Then add this line to your main theme :
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/CustomActionBar</item>

How to change primary and primaryDark color?

current layout
I have a problem related to xml layout, and I don't know how to add primary and primary dark color. Can anybody help me?
main.xml
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent" >
<ListView android:id="#+id/in"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:stackFromBottom="true"
android:transcriptMode="alwaysScroll"
android:layout_weight="1"/>
<LinearLayout
android:orientation="horizontal"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content">
<EditText android:id="#+id/edit_text_out"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_weight="1"
android:layout_gravity="bottom"/>
<Button android:id="#+id/button_send"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="#string/send"/>
</LinearLayout>
</LinearLayout>
How it should look like

You should modify, or create if it didn't exists already the file styles.xml, in the values folder, like that :
<style name="MyMaterialTheme.Base" >
<!-- Primary Color -->
<item name="colorPrimary">#color/colorPrimary</item>
<!-- darker variant for the status bar and contextual app bars -->
<item name="colorPrimaryDark">#color/colorPrimaryDark</item>
<!-- theme UI controls like checkboxes and text fields -->
<item name="colorAccent">#color/colorAccent</item>
</style>
It gets it's values from colors.xml file.

Do you mean you need to change the color of action bar located at top most position right? Then do this:
so, ActionBar will not work for your target environment which is at API level 10 (Android 2.3.3).
Just in case, if you target for minimum API level 11, you can change ActionBar's background color by defining custom style, as:
<resources>
<style name="MyTheme" parent="#android:style/Theme.Holo.Light">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/MyActionBar</item>
</style>
<style name="MyActionBar" parent="#android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.ActionBar">
<item name="android:background">ANY_HEX_COLOR_CODE</item>
</style>
And, set "MyTheme" as theme for application/activity.

How can I remove this extra space between the action bar icon in Android?

How can I remove this extra space between the icon in action bar?
See the picture please.
Tried everything, nothing seems to work:
<style name="Widget.Toolbar" parent="#style/Widget.AppCompat.Toolbar">
<item name="android:paddingRight">0dip</item>
<item name="android:paddingLeft">0dip</item>
<item name="android:background">#color/actionBarBackgroundColor</item> <!-- v11 -->
<item name="background">#color/actionBarBackgroundColor</item>
<item name="android:width">48dip</item>
</style>

You can achieve this through style , Try this
<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Light">
<item name="android:actionButtonStyle">#style/ActionButtonStyle</item>
</style>
<style name="ActionButtonStyle" parent="#android:style/Widget.Holo.ActionButton">
<item name="android:minWidth">0dip</item>
<item name="android:paddingLeft">0dip</item>
<item name="android:paddingRight">0dip</item>
</style>
Update your manifest as
android:theme="#style/AppTheme" >

You can do this my updating actionbar theme like I did, i was using appcomp theme. You need to play with Widget.Toolbar style, like I added padding on both side of actionbar.
<style name="AppTheme" parent="AppTheme.Base">
<item name="toolbarStyle">#style/Widget.Toolbar</item>
</style>
<style name="Widget.Toolbar" parent="#style/Widget.AppCompat.Toolbar">
<!-- 16dp padding on both sides of actionbar -->
<item name="android:paddingRight">16dp</item>
<item name="android:paddingLeft">16dp</item>
</style>
Update:
The padding on left will not work because Android set size for icon (if i am not wrong) to ~56dp, and actual image is scaled to fit centerInside, which leaves padding within image. So try reducing icon size (width) in style

This is how I solved using Toolbar from appcompat:
Style:
<style name="Theme.ProTaxi.Passageiro" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar"></style>
On the activity:
Toolbar actionBar = (Toolbar) findViewById(R.id.actionBar);
actionBar.setTitle("Title");
actionBar.setSubtitle("Subtitle");
actionBar.setTitleTextColor(Color.parseColor("#846A1A"));
Create a xml file in /layout folder with toolbar and included in each of activity xml:
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:id="#+id/toolbarLayout"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="vertical" >
<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/actionBar"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:background="#color/actionBarBackgroundColor"
android:layout_height="?attr/actionBarSize"
app:contentInsetEnd="0dp"
app:contentInsetStart="0dp" >
</android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar>
<View
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="1dp"
android:background="#A0A09F" />
</LinearLayout>
Including toolbar.xml in activity layout xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="#+id/RelativeLayout01"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:background="#drawable/background_telas" >
<LinearLayout
android:id="#+id/layoutTopToolbar"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="vertical" >
<include layout="#layout/toolbar" />
</LinearLayout>
<ListView
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="#+id/listaTaxisLivres"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:layout_below="#+id/layoutTopToolbar"
android:fastScrollEnabled="true" >
</ListView>
</RelativeLayout>

Android Toolbar: small title text in landscape mode

I'm testing the new Toolbar and AppCompat theme on Android and ran into a problem. My toolbar title text looks normal-sized on portrait mode but it became rather small on landscape mode although I didn't do anything in the code to change the title's text size. Here are the screen shots:
activity_main.xml:
<!-- A DrawerLayout is intended to be used as the top-level content view using match_parent for both width and height to consume the full space available. -->
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:orientation="vertical"
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
tools:context="com.techfunmyanmar.jujaka.ui.MainActivity">
<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
android:id="#+id/main_toolbar"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="?attr/colorPrimary"
app:theme="#style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Dark.ActionBar"
app:popupTheme="#style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light" />
<android.support.v4.widget.DrawerLayout
android:id="#+id/drawer_layout"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
<!-- As the main content view, the view below consumes the entire
space available using match_parent in both dimensions. -->
<FrameLayout
android:id="#+id/container"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent" />
<!-- android:layout_gravity="start" tells DrawerLayout to treat
this as a sliding drawer on the left side for left-to-right
languages and on the right side for right-to-left languages.
If you're not building against API 17 or higher, use
android:layout_gravity="left" instead. -->
<!-- The drawer is given a fixed width in dp and extends the full height of
the container. -->
<fragment
android:id="#+id/navigation_drawer"
android:name="com.techfunmyanmar.jujaka.ui.NavigationDrawerFragment"
android:layout_width="#dimen/navigation_drawer_width"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:layout_gravity="start"
tools:layout="#layout/fragment_navigation_drawer" />
</android.support.v4.widget.DrawerLayout>
</LinearLayout>
styles.xml:
<resources>
<!-- Base application theme. -->
<style name="AppBaseTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="windowActionBar">false</item>
<!-- Customize your theme here. -->
<item name="colorPrimary">#color/primary</item>
<item name="colorPrimaryDark">#color/primary_dark</item>
<item name="colorAccent">#color/accent</item>
</style>
<!-- Main application theme. -->
<style name="AppTheme" parent="AppBaseTheme">
</style>
<style name="DrawerArrowStyle" parent="Widget.AppCompat.DrawerArrowToggle">
<item name="spinBars">true</item>
</style>
</resources>

I tried to set android:titleTextAppearance of the toolbar but the style wasn't being applied. Then I realized I'm using the AppCompat theme so I used app:titleTextAppearance and the style is now being applied. It looks like the small letters in landscape are a problem in the built-in AppCompat.Toolbar.Title style itself so I overrode it to set the font size manually. The final code:
Toolbar XML:
<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
android:id="#+id/main_toolbar"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="?attr/actionBarSize"
android:background="?attr/colorPrimary"
app:titleTextAppearance="#style/ToolbarTitle"
android:theme="#style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Dark.ActionBar"
app:popupTheme="#style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light" />
Toolbar Style:
<style name="ToolbarTitle" parent="#style/TextAppearance.Widget.AppCompat.Toolbar.Title">
<item name="android:textSize">20sp</item>
</style>

AOSP Issue #170707 was written regarding the change in text size for title and subtitle. Project Member response was "Works as intended. Identical to framework behavior." Although I don't find changing the text size to be the desirable default behavior, it sounds like the AppCompat engineers had to maintain consistency with the (flawed) framework behavior. Developers are then left to override the default styles as described in Chilly Chan's answer.
Additions to Chilly Chan's answer:
1) The subtitle text size can be controlled in a similar way by defining another style derived from TextAppearance.Widget.AppCompat.Toolbar.Subtitle.
2) Default values for title/subtitle size in portrait orientation are 20dp/16dp (on my Galaxy S3, 4.4.2.). Chilly Chan's example specifies "17sp". Use "sp" only if you want to let user preference setting affect title/subtitle size.

I was looking for a solution without custom Toolbar, but with custom style and this code did the trick for me:
styles.xml
<style name="MyTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="colorPrimary">#color/colorPrimary</item>
<item name="colorPrimaryDark">#color/colorPrimaryDark</item>
<item name="colorAccent">#color/colorAccent</item>
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/MyActionBar</item>
</style>
<style name="MyActionBar" parent="#style/Widget.AppCompat.Light.ActionBar.Solid">
<item name="titleTextStyle">#style/MyTitleTextStyle</item>
</style>
<style name="MyTitleTextStyle" parent="#style/TextAppearance.AppCompat.Title">
<item name="android:textSize">20sp</item> <!-- Default for portrait is 20sp and for landscape 14sp-->
</style>
AndroidManifest.xml
<activity
android:name=".MainActivity"
android:label="#string/app_name"
android:theme="#style/MyTheme"/>
Where the MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity; tested on API 19, 22 and 23.

Try to add this to your toolbar section under the activity_main.xml.
android:minHeight="?android:attr/actionBarSize"
I also noticed that you are using standard dark action bar , suggest to use Theme with no action bar , defined a new toolbar where
Toolbar toolbar = (Toolbar) findViewById(R.id.my_awesome_toolbar);
setSupportActionBar(toolbar);
<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
android:id=”#+id/my_awesome_toolbar”
android:layout_height=”wrap_content”
android:layout_width=”match_parent”
android:minHeight=”?attr/actionBarSize”
android:background=”?attr/colorPrimary” />

I think it has to do with some layout changes performed when you rotate the device, ast it looks like you can prevent the resize by adding something like
android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize"
in the AndroidManifest.xml for the activity you're in. As always, android:configChanges has more implications so should be used only if you really need it :)

How to change background color of Action Bar Title

It's easy to change the background color of the whole action bar, or the text color of only the action bar title but I've found no way to change the background color of only the title like this :
I've tried :
<style name="MyActionBar.TitleTextStyle" parent="#android:style/TextAppearance.Holo.Widget.ActionBar.Title">
<item name="android:textColor">#000</item>
<item name="android:padding">5px</item>
<item name="android:background">#CC0000</item>
</style>
But only textColor works

Try following code on onCreate()
getActionBar().setBackgroundDrawable(new ColorDrawable(color.white));

First things first you need to have a custom theme declared for your application (or activity, depending on your needs). Something like…
<!-- Somewhere in AndroidManifest.xml -->
<application ... android:theme="#style/ThemeSelector">
Then, declare your custom theme for two cases, API versions with and without the Holo Themes. For the old themes we’ll customize the windowTitleBackgroundStyle attribute, and for the newer ones the ActionBarStyle.
<style name="ThemeSelector" parent="android:Theme.Light">
<item name="android:windowTitleBackgroundStyle">#style/WindowTitleBackground</item>
</style>
<style name="WindowTitleBackground">
<item name="android:background">#color/title_background</item>
</style>
<style name="ThemeSelector" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Light">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/ActionBar</item>
</style>
<style name="ActionBar" parent="android:style/Widget.Holo.ActionBar">
<item name="android:background">#color/title_background</item>
</style>
That’s it! Here we use #color/title_background as a background. It could also be a drawable, and you can also customize other attributes .

I created an ImageView where the Action Bar would have been by using 2 RelativeLayouts (0 padding on the outer, ordinary padding on the inner). Then I added the ImageView to the outer layout and manipulated it from there to act like an action bar, but with much more of my own control.
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:background="#ffffffff"
tools:context="dayOfWeekApp.MainActivity"
>
<ImageView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="100dp"
android:id="#+id/topBorder"
android:elevation="-1dp"
android:background="#649175"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:layout_alignParentStart="true"/>
<RelativeLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:paddingBottom="#dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
android:paddingLeft="#dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
android:paddingRight="#dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
android:paddingTop="#dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
>
Other layout elements...