Android – How to change the background color of dropdown menu in the actionbar

androidandroid-actionbarandroid-menubackground-colordrop-down-menu

I'm working on an android app and I'm facing some problems in designing my actionbar. I'm using the dark actionbar with white icons on it. I have a dropdown menu popped when I click the overflow icon. Everything is good but I need light background for the dropdown menu with red colored text. I have tried editing the theme in styles.xml but I can only change the background color of dropdown menu when I'm using the light colored theme.

I can get the light colored dropdown menu when I change the Theme.Base.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar to Theme.Base.AppCompat.Light but other icons like 'Search' turn very light and hardly visible (see 2nd picture). How can I change the text color on the drop down menu from black to red and make the 'Search' icon visible.

enter image description here

Here is the code for more insight

styles.xml

<resources>

<!-- Base application theme. -->
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.Base.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
    <!-- Customize your theme here. -->
    <item name="android:actionBarStyle">@style/MyActionBar</item>
    <item name="android:popupMenuStyle">@style/MyPopUpMenu</item>
</style>

<!-- ActionBar styles -->
<style name="MyActionBar"
    parent="@android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.ActionBar.Solid.Inverse">
    <item name="android:background">@color/gloryred</item>
</style>

<style name="MyPopUpMenu"
    parent="@android:style/Widget.Holo.Light.ActionBar.Solid.Inverse">
    <item name="android:popupMenuStyle">@color/white</item>
</style>

menu_actions.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<item android:id="@+id/action_search"
    android:title="@string/action_search"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_search"
    com.example.unitedstates.app:showAsAction="ifRoom"
    com.example.unitedstates.app:actionViewClass="android.widget.SearchView"/>

<item android:id="@+id/action_overflow"
    android:title="@string/action_overflow"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_overflow"
    com.example.unitedstates.app:showAsAction="ifRoom">
    <menu>
        <item
            android:id="@+id/action_help"
            android:title="@string/action_help"
            android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_help"
            android:showAsAction="never"/>
        <item
            android:id="@+id/action_about"
            android:title="@string/action_about"
            android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_about"
            android:showAsAction="never"/>
        <item
            android:id="@+id/action_feedback"
            android:title="@string/action_feedback"
            android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_feedback"
            android:showAsAction="never"/>
    </menu>
</item>

Best Answer

You can change the background color and text color of the dropdown menu in the actionbar like this.

Set the style for the popup menu in styles.xml.

 <style name="PopupMenuStyle" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light">

         <item name="android:background">@color/YourColor</item>
         <item name="android:textColor">@Color/YourColor</item>

</style>

Now set this style as the popupTheme for your toolbar.

<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar  
      xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"          
      xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

          // rest of your code
      app:popupTheme="@style/PopupMenuStyle" />

Related Solutions

Android – How to save an activity state using the save instance state

You need to override onSaveInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) and write the application state values you want to change to the Bundle parameter like this:

@Override
public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onSaveInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
  // Save UI state changes to the savedInstanceState.
  // This bundle will be passed to onCreate if the process is
  // killed and restarted.
  savedInstanceState.putBoolean("MyBoolean", true);
  savedInstanceState.putDouble("myDouble", 1.9);
  savedInstanceState.putInt("MyInt", 1);
  savedInstanceState.putString("MyString", "Welcome back to Android");
  // etc.
}

The Bundle is essentially a way of storing a NVP ("Name-Value Pair") map, and it will get passed in to onCreate() and also onRestoreInstanceState() where you would then extract the values from activity like this:

@Override
public void onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onRestoreInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
  // Restore UI state from the savedInstanceState.
  // This bundle has also been passed to onCreate.
  boolean myBoolean = savedInstanceState.getBoolean("MyBoolean");
  double myDouble = savedInstanceState.getDouble("myDouble");
  int myInt = savedInstanceState.getInt("MyInt");
  String myString = savedInstanceState.getString("MyString");
}

Or from a fragment.

@Override
public void onViewStateRestored(@Nullable Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onViewStateRestored(savedInstanceState);
    // Restore UI state from the savedInstanceState.
    // This bundle has also been passed to onCreate.
    boolean myBoolean = savedInstanceState.getBoolean("MyBoolean");
    double myDouble = savedInstanceState.getDouble("myDouble");
    int myInt = savedInstanceState.getInt("MyInt");
    String myString = savedInstanceState.getString("MyString");
}

You would usually use this technique to store instance values for your application (selections, unsaved text, etc.).

Android – How to close/hide the Android soft keyboard programmatically

You can force Android to hide the virtual keyboard using the InputMethodManager, calling hideSoftInputFromWindow, passing in the token of the window containing your focused view.

// Check if no view has focus:
View view = this.getCurrentFocus();
if (view != null) {  
    InputMethodManager imm = (InputMethodManager)getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
    imm.hideSoftInputFromWindow(view.getWindowToken(), 0);
}

This will force the keyboard to be hidden in all situations. In some cases, you will want to pass in InputMethodManager.HIDE_IMPLICIT_ONLY as the second parameter to ensure you only hide the keyboard when the user didn't explicitly force it to appear (by holding down the menu).

Note: If you want to do this in Kotlin, use: context?.getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE) as InputMethodManager

Kotlin Syntax

// Only runs if there is a view that is currently focused
this.currentFocus?.let { view ->
    val imm = getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE) as? InputMethodManager
    imm?.hideSoftInputFromWindow(view.windowToken, 0)
}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Android – How to save an activity state using the save instance state

Android – How to close/hide the Android soft keyboard programmatically

Related Topic