Develop Reference

Checkboxes render differently in light and dark mode

I have a row of checkboxes which seems to get extra spacing in dark mode. This is the XML for one of the checkboxes:
<CheckBox
android:id="#+id/cb1"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:checked="true" />
This is how the checkboxes look in light mode:
And in dark mode:
The issue exists both in the Android Studio design view and in the physical device: there is extra space around the boxes in dark mode. How do remove this extra space?

by the looks of your code , you didn't use any kind of styling , so i'm amusing you styled all of your CheckBoxs on your app's theme style.
if so :
on your [normal] and [-night] style.xml , maybe you used different options for styling CheckBoxs
on same styling values , maybe you used different parents

Try the classic invalidate caches and restart and if the issue still pertains then the problem must be with your grid adding extra padding in dark mode.

Different layout in android

I don't know whether this question has been asked or not but I cannot find the answer so here I ask it.
In my android app, I want to create a spinner. But the spinner in my layout is terribly ugly.
This image is my layout. Note the yellow part marks the spinner layout in my layout.
And this one is the layout of an online spinner example
I want my spinner style look like in the second image. I tried to copy all the code in xml file. but there is no changes in the style of the spinner.
Anyone know how to have spinner style look the same as in the second image?
UPDATE: when I click on the spinner in the second layout, it shows me a list like this(note the points on the right side of the list)
while my spinner can only show a normal list (have no points on the right side)
I want my spinner can shows the same as that.

if you just want to have the spinner to be "holofied" you can do this:
<Spinner
android:id="#+id/spinnermap"
style="#style/MySpinnerStyle"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
android:layout_centerVertical="true" />
values/styles.xml:
<style name="MySpinnerStyle" parent="android:Widget.Spinner">
</style>

set below attr for your spinner
android:spinnerMode="dropdown"
but it work for newer android version for older you can use support library or using IcsSpinner

textview doesn't go multiline

Here's my XML layout example of one of my TextViews which show itself correctly in android 4.2 ... I've downgraded a Nexus S to gingerbread 2.3.6 to test out my application and debug it! Right now, each of my TextViews doesn't take any more space than one line, not even wrapping itself at the end of the first line. (On 4.2, the example below was taking 3 lines and was adding "..." at the end if there was some text missing!)
How can I make my textViews compatible with gingerbread? Thank you!
<TextView
android:id="#+id/TV_guideRow_subtitle"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignLeft="#+id/TV_guideRow_title"
android:layout_below="#+id/TV_guideRow_title"
android:text="blabla text that could go up to 3 lines"
android:textColor="#3BB9FF"
android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
android:layout_above="#+id/TV_guideRow_more"
android:layout_marginRight="8dp"
android:layout_marginBottom="3dp"
android:ellipsize="end"
android:maxLines="3"/>

You want:
android:inputType="text|textMultiLine"
Also, depending on the parent of that TextView, multiline may not render properly. Try manually setting the height to, say, 100dp and see if that works.

After some more investigation, I've found out that all my related textView problems were related to my custom theme, which was made for android 4.0+ (since Holo was used as the base theme)
I've set the APIs which doesn't have holo to use the "Light" theme and everything is showing up correctly without any further modification.

How can I get the native Android Editbox

I have created an Editbox in XML using this code:
<EditText
android:id="#+id/txtEmail"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginLeft="10dp"
android:layout_marginRight="10dp"
android:layout_marginTop="50dp"
android:inputType="textEmailAddress" >
</EditText>
The textbox renders like this:
How can I get the native android EditText with the orange borders when focused, white background etc. ?
I tried adding
android:background="#android:color/white"
but that only changes the background to white.

The style you are seeing is "native" for the Honeycomb (3.0) Android version, specifically, the new Holo-dark theme. The orange-borders-and-white-background look was last used in 2.3.* and has since been left behind.

Agree with the answer of neutrino: The style you are seeing is "native" for the Honeycomb (3.0) Android version, specifically, the new Holo-dark theme.
But still if you wants the EditText that you want then you need to set the style/theme inside the AndroidManifest.xml file:
<activity android:theme="#android:style/Theme.Light">

when we add view's from layout, it renders from framework, then add the properties we provided . so in your code, EditText is native EditText, which varies from device to device . so if you want look and feel over a particular device make your own style for that and use it .

Had the same problem...
Try using:
EditText usr=(EditText)findViewById(R.id.editText1);
usr.setBackgroundResource(17301528);

If you really want to older versions of the EditText iamges (from sdk/android-8/platforms/data/res folder), place thema in the drawable folder, create a StateListDrawable out of it, and set the background of the EditText as that Drawable. But why bother ? Let app users enjoy the default look and feel of their device.

Removing Android ToggleButton's green indicator light

I would like my app to have a day of week selector with multiple day selection capability. I'm using ToggleButtons for this right now, but because of the indicator lights a ToggleButton takes too much space on the screen. Without the lights, my ToggleButtons would look like normal (toggleable) Buttons and they could fit in one row. How can I hide the lights?

The answer is this part:
android:background="#android:drawable/btn_default"
For example, following will make the light disappear and toggle button would look like a default button, but with the toggle functionality:
<ToggleButton android:id="#+id/your_btn"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:textOn="On" android:textOff="Off"
android:background="#android:drawable/btn_default" />

You can use a custom android:background drawable for them, that will override the graphics including the indicator light. If you look at Android: using framework drawables in custom button selector, there's instructions for copying resources from the SDK to your own project. You presumably could copy the platform normal button drawable and use that as your background.