Android Theme in Android Studio

Umeh Michael — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 17:18:17 +0000

Personalizing your app's theme is another way to greatly improve your app and improve user experience.

Applications usually have a unique color combination or font that makes it different and who says yours can't?

Making an app theme can be done in a few easy steps which starts with you picking a color combination and font to use in your app. You can get creative and pick these or consult someone experienced if you want something professional.

The theme of your app is controlled from your app's manifest. The theme is chosen on both application and activity level. Each activity uses its specific theme as defined in the manifest. Activities without themes use the app-level theme. I'll be guiding you through the process of customizing your app theme in the easiest way possible.

Android Studio previously had its own "Theme Editor" which allowed you preview themes and changes made to it (Cool right?...but it was scrapped in v3.3

In manifest, you'll notice that the default app theme should be something like this: "AppTheme". This theme is contained in res/values/styles. You can also create a new theme but its preferable to simply edit the default one.

Looking at AppTheme you'll notice three distinct items:

colorPrimary: This is the main color of the app and is used in more visible views like the toolbar, status bar, etc. Basically this should be the primary color your app will be associated. Go ahead to change the color to your preferred color which could be hard coded (RGB value) or point to a color resource. It is advisable to use color resources for good practice. Below is an example of the colorPrimary item:

(points to a color resource)

item name="colorPrimary">@color/colorPrimary</item>

(hard coded)

item name="colorPrimary">#3913B8</item>

colorPrimaryDark: This is a dark variant of the Primary color. In most cases it could literally be a slightly darker color variant of the primary while others like to make it something different from the primary but it easily associated and blends in with the primary color.

(points to a color resource)

item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/colorPrimaryDark</item>

(hard coded)

item name="colorPrimaryDark">#2600A5</item>

colorAccent: This is intended to be a bright compliment to the primary and dark colors. Usually something shiny and attractive. This color, by default, appears in buttons and texts like the floating action button.

(points to a color resource)

item name="colorAccent">@color/colorAccent</item>

(hard coded)

item name="colorAccent">#E64513</item>

A combination of these three colors can be enough to make your app look perfect but feel free to add as many colors as you need.

You could set styles of basically anything ranging from EditTexts to line spacing of texts under the theme and can customize themes specific to activities. You can assign themes to activities in the manifest by adding the android:theme="@style/yourThemeHere" /> tag under the activity. Activities without specific themes use the app level theme.

Below is an example of and EditText item in the app theme that gives all EditTexts in the app a dark text color and a light blue hint color by calling "TextEditStyle" as its style.

<item name="editTextStyle">@style/TextEditStyle</item>

Property of the "TextEditStyle"

<style name="TextEditStyle" parent="Widget.AppCompat.EditText">
        <item name="android:textColor">@android:color/holo_green_dark</item>
        <item name="android:textColorHint">@android:color/holo_blue_bright</item>
    </style>

Feel free to explore all theme items to know what will be useful to make your app more attractive than it already is. I hope this helped! Please leave a like and have a good day!

Beggining my #100DaysOfGADS2020 journey

Umeh Michael — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:03:21 +0000

Day 1 of #100DAYSOFGADS2020 :
I got accepted into the program and I so happy. I mostly used this day to get acquinted to the slack workspace and make new friends. Hope this improves me greatly.

Day 2 of #100DAYSOFGADS2020 :
Didn't really do much today. Went through the courses given to us and kind of revised basic programming functions. Most of what I watched are things I already know but I guess it doesn't hurt to learn it again.

Day 3, 4 & 5 of #100DAYSOFGADS2020 :
I managed to go through some courses which contain things I already know but turns out I really do not know much. I Learnt more about Android Studio. THings like Refactor, debug (using break point) etc are tools that I have never really used well in Android Studio but I am learning to now. I now prefer debug instead of run (which i use every single time). Also I learnt the different methods of the Logcat and how it can be used (and that you can right-click to clear the Logcat). Also learnt more about the Gradle files and how I can
manipulate it to get what I want. Guess it's not bad to "start afresh"

DEV Community: Umeh Michael

Android Theme in Android Studio

Beggining my #100DaysOfGADS2020 journey