Develop Reference

Activity with no Title/Action bar

First off, I'm not completely sure that Title Bar and Action Bar are the same? 2 different things?
I have an existing application that I need to maintain. In I have an activity that had a custom view as a title. What I want is to have the default title bar for the activity - the native one. I removed the custom view, and in the activity class I removed requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE); but the activity still doesn't show the Title bar. I've set the activity theme to android:theme="#style/Theme.AppCompat.Light". Still no Title Bar.
The activity intent is started with launchActivityForResult - don't know if that has anything to do with that.
What am I missing here? Is there a way to show it programmatically?

title-bar and action-bar is different thing.
use theme like this.
Theme.AppCompat.Light
instead of
Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar
<style name="MyMaterialTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="colorPrimary">#color/colorPrimary</item>
<item name="colorPrimaryDark">#color/colorPrimaryDark</item>
<item name="colorAccent">#color/colorAccent</item>
</style>
and add this theme to manifest
<application
android:name="com.qwesys.ecommerce.application.AppController"
android:allowBackup="true"
android:icon="#mipmap/ic_launcher"
android:label="#string/app_name"
android:largeHeap="true"
android:supportsRtl="true"
android:theme="#style/MyMaterialTheme">

First off, I'm not completely sure that Title Bar and Action Bar are the same? 2 different things?
Yes these are 2 different things implementation wise. Action Bar is now deprecated and we use something called the toolbar.
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/Toolbar.html
You can make customized toolbar https://developer.android.com/training/appbar/setting-up.html
And for your second part use startActivityForResult() and like suggested by #sagar above you use the theme to to make the toolbar appear.

Remove App Icon from Navigation Drawer ActionBar Does not work

I am working on an App which has design requirement to be built as it should only have the Title on the ActionBar and not the App Icon.
i tried various solutions found from StackOverflow like
getActionBar().setDisplayUseLogoEnabled(false);
getActionBar().setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);
getActionBar().setIcon(null);
however none of these worked so far, even i tried to make a hack/fix by making a transparent ic_launcher icon and put it into manifest.xml but it causes the App installation icon make transparent.
please help
getActionBar().setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);
works perfectly in 4.4 kitkat , but showing a back arrow in downgraded version like this
and i need it like this to work in every device

please try adding this..
getActionBar().setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);
getActionBar().setHomeButtonEnabled(true);
and in your theme add
<style name="CustomActionBarTheme"
parent="#android:style/Theme.Holo.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/ActionBar</item
</style>
<!-- ActionBar styles -->
<style name="ActionBar"
parent="#android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.ActionBar.Solid.Inverse">
<item name="android:icon">#android:color/transparent</item>
</style>

Its quite tricky anyhow, but i solved it,and it works like a charm in all devices.
I made a 2x2 px transparant icon and added it as
ActionBar actionBar = getActionBar();
actionBar.setIcon(R.drawable.actionbar_null_icon);
and removed the code
getActionBar().setDisplayUseLogoEnabled(false);
getActionBar().setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);
thanks to nDroidDev for suport

Android get Support Action Bar always returns NULL

I'm using the support library v7 on a certain project. I'm trying to instantiate the support action bar like this:
ActionBar actionBar = getSupportActionBar();
actionBar.setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);
actionBar.setDisplayOptions(ActionBar.DISPLAY_SHOW_CUSTOM);
actionBar.setCustomView(R.layout.top_action_bar);
actionBar.setDisplayShowCustomEnabled(true);
actionBar.setHomeButtonEnabled(true);
Everything works fine on Android devices with API lvl below 11. However, while trying to run the same code on newer devices, like a Samsung Galaxy S4 with Android 4+, getSupportActionBar() always returns null, causing the expected crash.
I'm using this style file:
<style name="my_style" parent="#style/Theme.AppCompat.Light">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/my_style_ab</item>
<item name="android:windowNoTitle">true</item>
</style>
<style name="my_style_ab" parent="#style/Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
<item name="android:height">70dp</item>
</style>
Any hints on what may be wrong? I think it has something to do with the style, or maybe I just can't use the support ActionBar on API lvl above 11. Thanks in advance.

Using android:windowNoTitle with true is hiding your ActionBar

I got the solution. And I didn't provide enough information in the question so it may be hard for others to help. However, I don't know why the problem happens, I just found out how to solve it. The error was due to the app title. I removed this item from the style:
<item name="android:windowNoTitle">true</item>
And also all the references in the code regarding that title bar, like this one:
requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);
Why does this solve it? still don't know. It may be useful for me if someone can explain it.

If you are using Toolbar and AppCompat then you probably have android:windowNoTitle set to true, hiding your action bar. Create a Toolbar in your xml and add this code in the onCreate() of your activity.
Toolbar toolbar = findViewById(R.id.toolbar);
setSupportActionBar(toolbar);

Inside Manifest file, check the activity for which are you having the issue.
I have the theme with "NoActionBar" Property.
Removing it resolved this code worked for me.
android:theme="#style/AppTheme.NoActionBar"

LeftNavBar creates black bar at the top of the activity

I'm trying to incorporate Google's LeftNavBarLibrary into my application. When I load the nav bar I end up with a black bar across the top of the activity. The bar appears to be taking up the space a traditional actionbar would occupy.
Does anyone know where the bar is coming from or how to remove it.
Thanks.
My application theme is slightly customized. Based on the AppCompat theme due to requirements of the MediaRouteActionProvider
styles.xml
<resources>
<style name="AppTheme" parent="#style/Theme.AppCompat">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/MyActionBar</item>
</style>
<style name="MyActionBar" parent="#style/Widget.AppCompat.ActionBar">
<item name="android:background">#drawable/ab_gradient</item>
</style>
</resources>
The activity pictured above has a custom theme defined in the manifest.
AndroidManifest.xml
<activity
android:name="my.app.namespace.CoreActivity"
android:theme="#android:style/Theme.Holo.NoActionBar.Fullscreen" >
</activity>
The applications minimum sdk version is 14. So it's not exclusively a Google TV app. I've only been able to test this bug on my Android 4.1 and 4.4 devices.

I deal with the action bar this way:
getActionBar().hide();
Try to put this in your main activity or the activity that is the parent and always present.
Don't bother about the theme in manifest, just set your theme with title bar and hide it through the code.
Hope this helps.

Take a look at: Hide the Status Bar on Android 4.0 and Lower
Notice that this is in the <application> tag. That might help you.
<application
...
android:theme="#android:style/Theme.Holo.NoActionBar.Fullscreen" >
...
</application>
or programmatically:
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
// If the Android version is lower than Jellybean, use this call to hide
// the status bar.
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT < 16) {
getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN,
WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN);
}
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
}

You can set android:windowActionBar style to false by setting custom theme.
Note: In this case getActionBar() will return null. If you remove the action bar using a theme, then the window will not allow the action bar at all.

Thanks for the answers guys. The real issue was actually that the LeftNavBar.java class was creating an artificial margin at the top of the screen. I'd have thought that a google published library would be better than that, but apparently not.

Remove icon/logo from action bar on android

I've been trying to find some way of removing the icon/logo from the action bar but the only thing I've found after an hour of searching SO, Android's documentation and Google is how to remove the title bar in whole. That is not what I want. Only want to remove the icon/logo from the title bar.
Any one know how to accomplish this? Preferably I'd like to do this in XML.

Add the following code in your action bar styles:
<item name="android:displayOptions">showHome|homeAsUp|showTitle</item>
<item name="displayOptions">showHome|homeAsUp|showTitle</item>
<item name="android:icon">#android:color/transparent</item> <!-- This does the magic! -->
PS: I'm using Actionbar Sherlock and this works just fine.

If you do not want the icon in particular activity.
getActionBar().setIcon(
new ColorDrawable(getResources().getColor(android.R.color.transparent)));

If you've defined android:logo="..." in the <application> tag of your AndroidManifest.xml, then you need to use this stuff to hide the icon:
pre-v11 theme
<item name="logo">#android:color/transparent</item>
v11 and up theme
<item name="android:logo">#android:color/transparent</item>
The use of these two styles has properly hidden the action bar icon on a 2.3 and a 4.4 device for me (this app uses AppCompat).

This worked for me
getActionBar().setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);

Calling
mActionBar.setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);
in addition to,
mActionBar.setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);
will hide the logo but display the Home As Up icon. :)

Be aware that:
<item name="android:icon">#android:color/transparent</item>
Will also make your options items transparent.

//disable application icon from ActionBar
getActionBar().setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);
//disable application name from ActionBar
getActionBar().setDisplayShowTitleEnabled(false);

getActionBar().setIcon(android.R.color.transparent);
This worked for me.

Remove or show the title using:
getActionBar().setDisplayShowTitleEnabled(true);
Remove or show the logo using:
getActionBar().setDisplayUseLogoEnabled(false);
Remove all:
getActionBar().setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);

you can also add below code in AndroidManifest.xml.
android:icon="#android:color/transparent"
It will work fine.
But I found that this gives a problem as the launcher icon also become transparent.
So I used:
getActionBar().setIcon(new ColorDrawable(getResources().getColor(android.R.color.transparent)));
and it worked fine.
But if you are having more than one activity and want to make the icon on an activity transparent then the previous approach will work.

I used this and it worked for me.
getActionBar().setIcon(
new ColorDrawable(getResources().getColor(android.R.color.transparent)));

getActionBar().setIcon(new ColorDrawable(getResources().getColor(android.R.color.transparent)));
getActionBar().setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);

I think the exact answer is: for api 11 or higher:
getActionBar().setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);
otherwise:
getSupportActionBar().setDisplayShowHomeEnabled(false);
(because it need a support library.)

go to your manifest an find the application tag
android:icon="#android:color/transparent"// simply add this on place of your icon
.....
...
...

Qiqi Abaziz's answer is ok, but I still struggled for a long time getting it to work with the compatibility pack and to apply the style to the correct elements. Also, the transparency-hack is unneccessary. So here is a complete example working for v8 and up:
values\styles.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<style name="MyActivityTheme" parent="#style/Theme.AppCompat">
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/NoLogoActionBar</item> <!-- pre-v11-compatibility -->
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/NoLogoActionBar</item>
</style>
<style name="NoLogoActionBar" parent="#style/Widget.AppCompat.ActionBar">
<item name="displayOptions">showHome</item> <!-- pre-v11-compatibility -->
<item name="android:displayOptions">showHome</item>
</style>
</resources>
AndroidManifest.xml (shell)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="8" android:targetSdkVersion="19"/>
<application android:theme="#android:style/Theme.Light.NoTitleBar">
<activity android:theme="#style/PentActivityTheme"/>
</application>
</manifest>

Go in your manifest and find the your activity then add this code:
android:theme="#android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar"
above line hide your Actionbar .
If you need to other feature you can see other options with (CLR + SPC).

The fastest way is to modify your Manifest.xml.
If for example you want to remove the logo of activity "Activity", and leave the logo in other activities, you can do the following:
<activity
android:name=".home.XActivity"
android:logo="#android:color/transparent"
android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden" />
<activity
android:name=".home.HomeActivity"
android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden" />

None of the above worked.
But this did the trick:
override fun onCreate() {
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)
setSupportActionBar(toolbar)
toolbar.logo = null
(removed icon from toolbar)