Develop Reference

How to make android studio layout (XML) extend to the very top of the screen

I am trying to make an android app that with accesibility permissions draws over any app at the very top of my phone (at the status bar). The problem is that the top of the XML is not the top of the screen, it stays below the status bar. And yes, my app is at full screen mode (copyed some code of the full screen activity template in android studio). This is my first post and I am starting to android studio. Thanks in advance.

create a new Style in Styles.xml and use it under the activity you want as full screen , it will cover the status bar
<style name="Theme.fullScreen" parent="Theme."MainTheme">
<item name="android:windowLayoutInDisplayCutoutMode"
tools:targetApi="o_mr1">shortEdges</item>
<item name="android:windowTranslucentStatus">true</item>
<item name="android:windowTranslucentNavigation">true</item>
</style>

Get rid of Action bar and Transparent top bar?

I'm new to Android studio and I figured out how I can send my application to my phone. The problem is, In the preview, At the bottom, it has this auction bar (See photo) Is there a way to get rid of that? Because my phone (Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge) Does not have that, And it sits in the way if I want to place something at the very bottom. Because in android studio it may be at the very bottom, But on my phone, it isn't.
Also, Is there a way to make that top bar, That is now black, Sort of transparent? So it takes the colour of the background? You see it in a lot of apps. As I mentioned, I'm very new in android studio so sorry.
Thanks in advance

The control bar at the bottom is part of the emulator aka any phone without hard buttons. You can toggle to full screen and it will hide it for you.
For example code simply create new activity and select fullscreen activity. You will see that it manages it by touch of surface to reappear and timer to dissappear. Just remove that bloat and handle it yourself. Done !
As for the status bar at the top, it uses your activity default background. So if you want to change this go to your styles and add a background to your AppTheme and this will be the default background color of unspecified areas instead of black.
Example:
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar">
<!-- Customize your theme here. -->
<item name="colorPrimary">#color/colorPrimary</item>
<item name="colorPrimaryDark">#color/colorPrimaryDark</item>
<item name="colorAccent">#color/colorAccent</item>
<item name="android:windowBackground">#color/blue</item>
<item name="android:actionMenuTextColor">#color/white</item>
</style>
The windowBackground color will drive the background color of unspecified areas unless you override the theme on any particular activity in the manifest. Goodluck.

Logo in ActionBar instead of text

I want to put a picture on my action bar, instead of the text (No, I am not using action bar sherlock), and if possible for the action bar to be transparrent AND with detectable height (I have done transparent action bar before, but you can't get its height programatically this way).
It should be in styles somehow, not programatically. Right now I have this styles.xml and it does absolutely nothing...
<resources>
<style name="AppTheme" parent="#android:style/Theme.Holo.Light">
<item name="android:actionBarStyle">#style/AppTheme.ActionBarStyle</item>
</style>
<style name="AppTheme.ActionBarStyle" parent="android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.ActionBar">
<item name="android:icon">#drawable/img_ab_youlocal_logo</item>
</style>
P.S. YES, I have searched before asking, the other asnwers were not helpful.

If you are using an api < 21 you could do something similar this:
ActionBar actionbar = getActionBar();
actionbar.setDisplayShowCustomEnabled(true);
actionbar.setCustomView(R.layout.someLayoutfile);
You may have to this before the Parent View gets inflated / set via setContentView();
Also in api > 11 you have a logo attribute:
Using a logo instead of an icon
By default, the system uses your application icon in the action bar, as specified by the icon attribute in the
<application> or <activity>
element. However, if you also specify the logo attribute,
then the action bar uses the logo image instead of the icon.
A logo should usually be wider than the icon, but should not include unnecessary text.
You should generally use a logo only when it
represents your brand in a traditional format that users recognize. A
good example is the YouTube app's logo—the logo represents the
expected user brand, whereas the app's icon is a modified version that
conforms to the square requirement for the launcher icon.

ActionBar overflowing on pre-ICS devices

I'm developing an application that needs to be compatible with Android 2.2+ it's using ActionBarSherlock to customize the ActionBar on pre-ICS devices.
I'm facing a problem only on 2.2 and 2.3 devices that makes the content of the ActionBar overflow even though the content fits the device screen. Something like this:
I've already tested (on the emulator) the device screen size (mdpi on 320x480) runnning Android 4.0 and it works fine, so I believe that problem is something related to the ActionBarSherlock.
I'm also tried drastically reducing my icon files, but it even though the images were smaller, the content was still overflowing.
Here is my styles.xml file:
<style name="AppBaseTheme" parent="Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar">
</style>
<style name="AppTheme" parent="AppBaseTheme">
<item name="actionBarStyle">#style/AppBaseTheme.ActionBarStyle</item>
<item name="actionBarTabStyle">#style/AppBaseTheme.ActionBarTabStyle</item>
<item name="actionBarTabBarStyle">#style/AppBaseTheme.ActionBarTabBarStyle</item>
</style>
<style name="AppBaseTheme.ActionBarStyle" parent="Widget.Sherlock.Light.ActionBar.Solid.Inverse">
<item name="background">#drawable/action_bar_background</item>
<item name="android:background">#drawable/action_bar_background</item>
</style>
<style name="AppBaseTheme.ActionBarTabStyle" parent="Widget.Sherlock.Light.ActionBar.TabView.Inverse">
<item name="background">#android:color/transparent</item>
<item name="android:background">#android:color/transparent</item>
<item name="android:paddingLeft">0dip</item>
<item name="android:paddingRight">0dip</item>
</style>
<style name="AppBaseTheme.ActionBarTabBarStyle" parent="Widget.Sherlock.Light.ActionBar.TabBar.Inverse">
<item name="background">#drawable/action_bar_tab_divider</item>
<item name="android:background">#drawable/action_bar_tab_divider</item>
<item name="divider">#drawable/sp</item>
<item name="android:divider">#drawable/sp</item>
</style>
The file #drawable/action_bar_background is 320px wide and both #drawable/action_bar_tab_divider and #drawable/sp are 1px wide.
And here is the code for creating the tabs on my main activity:
ActionBar actionBar = super.getSupportActionBar();
actionBar.setNavigationMode(ActionBar.NAVIGATION_MODE_TABS);
this.createTab(actionBar, R.drawable.action_bar_tab_home_off);
this.createTab(actionBar, R.drawable.action_bar_tab_news_off);
this.createTab(actionBar, R.drawable.action_bar_tab_videos_off);
this.createTab(actionBar, R.drawable.action_bar_tab_guide_off);
private void createTab(ActionBar actionBar, int resource) {
Tab t = actionBar.newTab();
t.setTabListener(this);
t.setIcon(resource);
actionBar.addTab(t);
}
Any ideas?

One of the problems is that the Action View "Tab Bar" automatically scales images to a predetermined size, so even if you make the icon super large or super small it should fill roughly the same space in the action bar.
The TabBar/TabView was also designed to overflow, which you have already found ^.^ It's for apps that open up 10 to 20 different tabs at a time, the user can scroll through the list of them. Not only that but the tab view is difficult to work with for using a fixed, non scrolling list of icons, simply because Android devices come in all shapes and sizes.
Two options that might suite what you are looking for. Create your own RelativeLayout or LinearLayout with the icons inside of the layout. This way you get to choose the size of the action bar every time =) You can have the bar dock either on the top or bottom of any Activity.
If this isn't an option you may be able to add the icons onto the top ActionBar menu itself which doesn't do scrolling. However your icons might not all fit on the main ActionBar which would cause any overflowing icons to get placed into the overflow menu dropdown. =(
To remove the divider spacing between tabs save the following code as a new xml file in your drawable folder such as dividerdrawable.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:shape="line" >
<size
android:width="0px"
android:color="#android:color/black"
android:dashWidth="0px"
android:dashGap="0px" />
</shape>
and then use that drawable for your tab divider.
<item name="divider">#drawable/dividerdrawable</item>

Get rid of blue line

With the help of ActionBarSherlock I try to get my app running on pre 3.0 devices. There is a blue divider in the action bar, which I want to have removed.
I figured out that it isn't a divider, but part of the background graphic of the action bar. To get rid of the blue line I decided to override the background like this:
<style name="MyActionBar" parent="android:Widget.Holo.ActionBar">
<item name="android:background">#drawable/black</item>
<item name="background">#drawable/black</item>
</style>
I also set the background in the Java code:
getSupportActionBar().setStackedBackgroundDrawable(this.getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.black));
As a result the blue line disappears on 4.x devices, but is still visible on 2.3.x devices. How do I get rid of the blue line on 2.3.x devices?

Stupid mistake: I used setStackedBackgroundDrawable instead of setBackgroundDrawable. It works fine with setBackgroundDrawable. This is the correct method to set the background of the action bar. setStackedBackgroundDrawable sets the background of the tab bar.

Seems that the blue line is part of the TabWidget you have there... But if it isn't you can have a look at this webpage: http://jgilfelt.github.io/android-actionbarstylegenerator/
It's a really good Action Bar style generator. Worth a try :)

actionBarDivider attribute belongs to the theme
Remove it like this:
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.Sherlock">
<item name="android:actionBarDivider">#null</item>
</style>