Develop Reference

Changing the Color of the the Menu Items does not work

I have created a menu and now I want to change the text color of the individual menu titles.
To do this, I first created a style that should contain the corresponding attribute and then called this style in my Activity_home_drawer.xml. However, this only changes the menu TextColor when the corresponding menu title is clicked but is not permanent as I would like it to be.
What do I have to do so that the text color in my menu changes permanently to white and not Black anymore? Is my way of doing it the right way or is there a more elegant way to change the TextColor?
Thanks for any help!
Part of my Activity_home_drawer.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
tools:showIn="navigation_view"
android:theme="#style/TextAppearance44">
<group android:id="#+id/category_group">
<item
android:id="#+id/nav_menu"
android:icon="#drawable/ic_store_black_24dp"
android:title="#string/menu_menu"
android:theme="#style/TextAppearance44"
/>
</group>
My TextAppearance44 style
<style name="TextAppearance44">
<item name="android:textColor">#color/colorWhite</item>
<item name="android:actionMenuTextColor">#color/colorWhite</item>
<item name="android:textSize">16sp</item>
<item name="android:titleTextColor">#color/colorWhite</item>
</style>

You need to change your ToolBar style. Check these two tutorials:
Toolbar assigning to activity and styling:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2014/10/appcompat-v21-material-design-for-pre.html?m=1
Changing style and items colors in the Toolbar:
https://www.murrayc.com/permalink/2014/10/28/android-changing-the-toolbars-text-color-and-overflow-icon-color/
In your case, you are looking mainly for (code fragment from second tutorial):
<!-- android:actionMenuTextColor is the color of the text of
action (menu) items in the Toolbar, at least in the
Theme.AppCompat theme.
For some reason, they already get the textColorPrimary
when running on API 21, but not on older versions of
Android, so this is only necessary to support older
Android versions.-->
<item name="actionMenuTextColor">#color/abc_primary_text_material_light</item>

I solved it by myself; I added these to lines to my NavigationView in my ActivityHome (where the Menu comes up).
app:itemTextColor="#color/colorWhite"
app:itemIconTint="#color/colorWhite"
Simple mistake, didnot know that there was such a attribute.

Customizing Up/Back/Burger background in my ActionBar

I'm trying to customize the background of my action bar items with a selector, to override what is shown when the button is pressed.
This was pretty easy with menu buttons (e.g., overflow icon), as you can style them with actionBarItemBackground .
Sadly this does not apply for the up/home/left indicator. I have unsuccessfully tried, in my styles.xml:
<item name="actionButtonStyle">;
<item name="actionBarStyle">;
<item name="toolbarStyle">;
None of the nested attributes seem to act on the home icon background. I also searched over android.R.attr and gave a look at this. Is there any way?
I would like to stay with the "up" indicator, without inflating a custom view. In that case, I would also have to inflate the title as well as custom views naturally appear at the end of the title. AND I would lose the burger-to-arrow animation, AND I would have to take care about margins and design guidelines (now managed by AppCompat), and some other bad thing on the way.
I thought about setting a Logo, but that would have some complications as well and I don't think I could change the background anyway.
I thought about Toolbar being a Layout, so I could put custom views in it from XML. If I'm not wrong they appear after the title, so neither this is a good idea.
What can I do?

please let me know if it works
add this to your your theme or if it doesn't take both remove the one with android prefix
<item name="android:selectableItemBackground">#drawable/selector</item>
<item name="selectableItemBackground">#drawable/selector</item>
Example #drawable/selector:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item
android:state_pressed="true"
android:drawable="#ddffffff" />
<item
android:drawable="#android:color/transparent" />
</selector>

set actionbar icon height to match actionbar height

see the problem here, the grey checkbox leaves room from the top and bottom of the action bar:
styles.xml
<resources xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<style name="CustomActionBarTheme" parent="Theme.Base.AppCompat.Light">
<item name="android:windowContentOverlay">#null</item>
<item name="android:actionButtonStyle">#style/ActionButtonStyle</item>
</style>
<!--<style name="ActionButtonStyle" parent="#android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.ActionButton">-->
<style name="ActionButtonStyle" >
<item name="android:height">#dimen/abc_action_bar_default_height</item>
<item name="android:layout_height">#dimen/abc_action_bar_default_height</item>
</style>
i set the item like so:
getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.submit_action, menu);
submit_action looks like:
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto">
<item android:id="#+id/action_submit"
android:icon="#drawable/check"
app:showAsAction="always" />
</menu>
and finally, attached is the #drawable/check being used.
any idea how i can get the check to fill the actionbar?

The reason your icon doesn't fill the ActionBar is due to how the ActionMenuItemView measures the icon.
The ActionMenuItemView invokes a maximum size of 32dp when it sets the bounds for your icon
So, it makes so difference how large your image is, the system will always resize it.
any idea how i can get the check to fill the actionbar?
You should use a action layout for your MenuItem, a check mark icon with no background, and change the background color of the action layout parent as you see fit. Here's an example:
layout
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
style="?android:attr/actionButtonStyle"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="#e8e8e8"
android:clickable="true"
android:contentDescription="#string/cd" >
<ImageView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:contentDescription="#null"
android:scaleType="centerInside"
android:src="#drawable/ic_action_tick" />
</RelativeLayout>
MenuItem
<item
android:id="#+id/action_submit"
android:actionLayout="#layout/your_action_layout"
android:showAsAction="always"/>
Accessibility
It's important to make sure your MenuItem is accessible. Normally when you long press an item in the ActionBar a short Toast will display the content description for you, but when you're using a custom MenuItem it's up to you to implement this pattern. An easy way to do this is by using Roman Nurik's CheatSheet. If you're unsure how to use it, you should refer to my answer here that goes into much more detail on creating custom MenuItem layouts.
Alternatively
If you want to use that background color for every MenuItem you have, you could create a custom style and apply it using the android:actionButtonStyle attribute. Here's an example of that:
Your style
<style name="Your.ActionButton" parent="#android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.ActionButton">
<item name="android:background">#e8e8e8</item>
</style>
Your theme
<style name="Your.Theme" parent="#android:style/Theme.Holo.Light">
<item name="android:actionButtonStyle">#style/Your.ActionButton</item>
</style>
Results

Here's what I do with Icons in Android to get the sizing correct. You have an existing project with the res/drawable- folders. You have to put the correct Icon into the correct folder.
Start a new project wizard and when you get to the launcher icon put in the Icon you want to use in your existing project. finish the wizard. The wizard will make the various sizes of Icons for you. Then I manually copy the Icons from the res/drawable-xdpi res/drawable-ldpi etc to the corresponding folder on my existing project. Delete the new project it is no longer needed.

Android ActionBar styling issues

I want to have custom background for the menu items displayed in the ActionBar. I found out that I can do that by adding the following item to my app theme style definition:
<item name="android:actionBarItemBackground">#drawable/actionbar_button</item>
Where actionbar_button.xml contains:
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item android:drawable="#drawable/action_btn_on" android:state_pressed="true" />
<item android:drawable="#drawable/action_btn_off" />
</selector>
However, this causes the background image to also render behind the custom app logo displayed on the left of the ActionBar. After several attempts at figuring out a selector that would include only the buttons, I came up with this:
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<item android:drawable="#drawable/action_btn_on" android:state_pressed="true" android:state_enabled="true" />
<item android:drawable="#drawable/action_btn_off" android:state_pressed="false" android:state_enabled="true"/>
<item android:drawable="#android:color/transparent"/>
</selector>
Which sort of worked, and after the app loads fully the background behind the logo is transparent as I want it. But the problem is that while it's still loading it briefly shows the logo with the button background behind it and more annoyingly, it scales and crops the logo to fit inside the fill area of the 9-patch graphic that is the button background. When finished loading, the background is switched out, but the scaling and cropping remains, which looks quite ugly. How can I fix it?

Have not found a working solution to the general problem of setting image-based backgrounds to ActionBar buttons, but the scaling/cropping does not happen if I use entered XML based backgrounds, such as created with a layer-list of shapes. For some cases in may not be viable, but in my case it was entirely possible, and maybe even better than using a bitmap based resource.

Custom title bar still shows original on startup

I'm using a custom title bar in my app and it all works fine except that when the app starts up, the original (standard) android title bar is shown for a brief time before it is replaced by my custom title bar.
This is not a problem when the app is already loaded in memory because the 'delay' is not apparent but if the app is not already in memory, it is very obvious.
There's nothing special about the code :
requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
getWindow().setFeatureInt(Window.FEATURE_CUSTOM_TITLE, R.layout.window_title);
I thought about changing the style to have no window title and just include my custom title in the top of the layout but that doesn't seem right.
Thanks for any pointers.

Thomas Devaux has posted a smart solution. It worked in my app
Change the windowTitleBackgroundStyle to use color “#android:color/transparent”.
Also create a style for the text “android:windowTitleStyle” and set its “android:textColor” >to transparent as well.

For completeness to Lluis' answer, here's the full code you need to hide the default-title before the custom-title is initiated:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<style name="CustomWindowTitleStyle">
<item name="android:textColor">#android:color/transparent</item>
</style>
<style name="CustomTheme" parent="#android:style/Theme.Holo">
<item name="android:windowActionBar">false</item>
<item name="android:windowTitleBackgroundStyle">#android:color/transparent</item>
<item name="android:windowTitleSize">50dp</item>
<item name="android:windowTitleStyle">#style/CustomWindowTitleStyle</item>
</style>
</resources>

add a splash screen activity before the main activity loads, should have enough time for the next one to load properly

Are you able to use an app theme to set a custom title globally for your app? See here for a pretty good example. I had a similar problem and i seem to remember going this route fixed it.