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Android: Why subtitle in ListView not grey?

I use latest Android Studio and SDK. In preview & real device i see this:
My code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
tools:context="com.myappname.view.AboutActivity">
<ListView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:id="#+id/listViewAbout" />
</RelativeLayout>
How i make subtitle text color is gray? Like this:

I'm going out on a limb and assume that you're using the row layout simple_list_item_2.xml (based on the screenshot) which gives you two rows. The problem, if you may call it that, is that depending on the SDK version, the styling for this layout has changed.
On SDK 23, it looks like this:
However, on say SDK 19, it looks like this:
Why?
To understand this we first need to take a look at the xml that generates the rows from simple_list_item_2.xml, you'll see it's a pretty simple layout that uses the now deprecated view TwoLineListItem but that's just a plus on why to use your custom layout.
<TwoLineListItem xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:minHeight="?attr/listPreferredItemHeight"
android:mode="twoLine"
android:paddingStart="?attr/listPreferredItemPaddingStart"
android:paddingEnd="?attr/listPreferredItemPaddingEnd">
<TextView android:id="#id/text1"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginTop="8dp"
android:textAppearance="?attr/textAppearanceListItem" />
<TextView android:id="#id/text2"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_below="#id/text1"
android:layout_alignStart="#id/text1"
android:textAppearance="?attr/textAppearanceListItemSecondary" />
</TwoLineListItem>
The reason is because of the way the style textAppearanceListItemSecondary is resolved in each SDK version. The style is what gives the text the size, the color, etc. The evolution of the interface in Android has given birth to a huge ecosystem of themes and relying on the default styling will result in inconsistencies like the one you stumbled upon.
What to do about it?
You should use your own layout for this to allow for uniform styling across versions. To do so, please refer to any of the multiple questions covering this matter. But in short it just means creating a layout file, call it for example custom_row.xml and having the layout look exactly as you please. This also gives you total control over placement of the items, extra Views that you may need, and overhead in terms of coding is minimal compared to the SimpleAdapter or ArrayAdapter that perhaps you were using.
Note
You should consider moving your code towards RecyclerView instead of ListView if you haven't already.

You can set Textview property
android:textColor="#color/grey"
in you Adapter layout to change colour of your sub item
Hope this will help

How to add a spacing between text and underline in android?

I have defined text of a textview as -
<string name="text"><u>this is my text</u></string>
I needed some space between the text and the underline, so I added lineSpacingExtra="2dp" to the textview, but it is not working.
Can anyone tell how to achieve this?
I need to support API 14 till 21. The above test was done on API 21.

I spent a great deal of my time on this question and here are my findings!
Firstly, To increase the spacing between the text and underline in css you need to use styles and unfortunately Android TextView does not support style tag when using Html.fromHtml(). Unfortunately even span tag is not supported (otherwise that could have been used). To see the entire list of tags supported check the HTML Tags Supported By TextView blog.
Now since we know the basic simple implementation wouldn't work, the only other way remaining is to fake it (fool the user!). In your xml layout where you have the TextView add a View below it with the following properties.
<TextView
android:id="#+id/textView"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="#string/text"
android:textSize="20sp"/>
<View
android:id="#+id/underlineView"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="1dp"
android:layout_alignEnd="#+id/textView"
android:layout_alignLeft="#+id/textView"
android:layout_alignRight="#+id/textView"
android:layout_alignStart="#+id/textView"
android:layout_below="#+id/textView"
android:layout_marginTop="10dp"
android:background="#android:color/holo_red_dark"/>
As you can see the underlineView is emulating the underline. It has its width fixed to the textview above it. You can set its color to whatever you need and importantly you can adjust the spacing using the android:layout_marginTop property. Hope this helps!

My suggestion is to remove the underline from the text string entirely because you can't customize the spacing from there. After that, you have a few options. One option is to use the #drawable feature as discussed in the following link: http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-design-edit-text-view-with-bottom-border-alone-in-Android-and-edit-text-view-with-some-special-symbol-like-below-image
If you want a quick and easy "hack" then go to the layout XML for your activity where your TextView is created. Wrap your TextView in a LinearLayout as follows:
<LinearLayout
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_width="wrap_content">
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="#string/text"
android:layout_marginBottom="2dp" />
<TextView
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="1dp"
android:background="#color/underline" />
</LinearLayout>
The first TextView is where your text ("this is my text") is displayed so you can adjust the "layout_marginBottom" to whatever spacing you need between your text and the underline. The second TextView acts as your underline so to adjust its thickness you can change the "layout_height" value.
The final step to making this work is to go into your "values" folder in your project and create a new XML file named "colors.xml". The entire contents for this example are below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<color name="underline">#333333</color>
</resources>
Simply change the hex color value in this XML file to customize the underline color to your choice.

Android: Overwrite standard xml layout's properties for list item

Is there a way of using the standard android xml files (simple list item multiple choices) and only adjust some of the properties so that I can also use the standard adapters? For now I made a new view xml and copied the code from simple_list_item_multiple_choice. There I only added a background color. This works, but now I have the almost same code 2 times.
I also know that custom view and custom adapter would work, but I hope there is a more "smart" solution for this (in my case really only the background color matters, the rest is fine). It seems a lot more code for only changing the background color of an item.
I thought with include/merge tags I could include the standard xml and justify to my needs, but this doesnt work (also because I couldn't use the standard arrayAdapter anymore)
This is how my view looks now:
<CheckedTextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="#android:id/text1"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="?android:attr/listPreferredItemHeight"
android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceMedium"
android:gravity="center_vertical"
android:checkMark="?android:attr/listChoiceIndicatorMultiple"
android:paddingLeft="6dip"
android:paddingRight="6dip"
android:ellipsize="end"
android:singleLine="true"
android:background="#color/white"
/>

Did you check this out? Styles
I am not sure if this is what your question meant but according to what I could grasp, you were talking of styles only

Fixed-width TextView with stretched compound drawable

I'm trying to achieve the following layout: a fixed width TextView aligned to the left of its parent, with the text inside it aligned to the right side of that TextView (that's why fixed width, can it be done other way?) and the rest of the parent is filled with a drawable (simple line). Like this:
It's a ListView containing 2 types of rows and the layout for the rows with lines is quite trivial - LinearLayout with TextView and ImageView (I can post the exact code later if needed). And I'm getting a warning that it could be replaced with a single TextView with compound drawable.
I'm all for optimization so I really tried to follow that advice. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get the same result - the line is either constrained to TextView's width or text is aligned to the right side of the ListItem, now to fixed position.
Am I missing something?
Edit: Apparently it is not actually possible and since there are some other complications (the drawable is now a level-list drawable, which is not always a line and sometimes it has a non-fixed height that I have to set) I will leave it as it is now - linear layout, containing one TextView and one ImageView.

I don't think that you're missing anything. The TextView compound drawable features are not very customizable and in general are not worth the time you spend trying to get them to look right. Some lint warnings are a little overzealous and premature.

The optimization that the lint refers to is something that is better attributed for a fixed size image. In your case, the line has to stretch the rest of the screen length and as such it is not something that can be done with a textview with compound drawable. This kind of lint warning is more of a suggestion rather than something that MUST be done and is detected by just checking for a linear layout with only a textview and an imageview rather than checking what would need to go in the image view. If you already have it working the way you did it I think you should leave it alone.

Your view create from this -
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal" >
<TextView
android:id="#+id/time"
android:layout_width="#dimen/today_time_width"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="left"
android:gravity="right"
android:layout_marginRight="5dp" />
<ImageView
android:layout_gravity="center"
android:id="#+id/border"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="#dimen/today_current"
android:src="?attr/item_boundary" />
</LinearLayout>

There is no way to achive this using only standart TextView. If you really want to reduce view count you can create your custom TextView class, set layoutWidth to matchParent and draw line from text end to right border. But it's not worth to be doing. Some extra views won't slow your list.

I am not sure if you will be able to achieve what you really want to , but then you could change the linear layout in the link you posted to something like this:
<RelativeLayout
android:id="#+id/relTrial"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content">
<TextView
android:id="#+id/txtTime"
android:layout_width="100dp"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:gravity="right"
android:text="12:45 AM"
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"/>
<LinearLayout
android:id="#+id/lnrSep"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="1dp"
android:gravity="bottom"
android:layout_marginLeft="5dp"
android:layout_marginRight="5dp"
android:layout_centerVertical="true"
android:orientation="horizontal"
android:background="#android:color/darker_gray"
android:layout_toRightOf="#+id/txtTime"
android:layout_alignParentRight="true"></LinearLayout>
</RelativeLayout>
This way the time text will be right aligned although being at the left side, and the line will also be visible.
Hope that helps.

If I got you right, you want to add bottom border to list view item?
What about to try this:
android:drawableBottom="#drawable/line"

Android TextView doesn't do linebreak in ListView (multiline text)

I have created a 3-level ExpandableListView and have the problem that the TextViews which are used for the 2nd and 3rd level do not support line-breaks if the content is too long. It should be dynamically over more than one line, if needed. The 1st level TextView does it well (automatically) and I actually had the same settings in the xml for all three TextViews. Followed are the layout xmls, the one TextView with the id groupname is for the 2nd level (e.g. the first red X in the picture below) and the one with id childname is for the 3rd level (e.g. the second and third red X in the picture below). It should all be like at the green hook in the picture.
"singleLine=false" seems not to work. Also tried some different options found in other SO posts, but what I've testet haven't worked for me. Like ellipsize, scroll horizontale, different layout_width and so on. The only thing worked is to set a fixed layout_width on x hundred dp, but this is not dynamically, I'm right?
Would be great if anybody could help me with this. Lot of thanks!
Here's a screenshot:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="match_parent" >
<TextView
android:id="#+id/childname"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginRight="60dp"
android:layout_marginLeft="60dp"
android:textColor="#AAAAAA"
android:singleLine="false"
android:text=""
android:gravity="center_vertical"
android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceMedium" />
<TextView
android:id="#+id/groupname"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
android:layout_marginLeft="45dp"
android:layout_marginRight="60dp"
android:textColor="#555555"
android:singleLine="false"
android:gravity="center_vertical"
android:text=""
android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceMedium" />

Add this line in your xml
android:inputType="textMultiLine"
or
Add text using coding like this, where you can add line break using '\n'(But here you have to manually add breaks where you want them)
TextView txt1 = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.childname);
txt1.setText("Hi \nHello \nHow are You");
Results will be
Hi
Hello
How are You
Edit
Accepted Answer - removing the line 'android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"

try using LinearLayout instead of RelativeLayout as parent for the TextView

I had add this attribute to my TextView inside ListView, and makes it do line break correct.
android:maxWidth="xxxdp"
F.Y.R.