dark action bar with Theme.AppCompat

android, android-source, android-theme

Solution

The blue line is part of the background image used for the action bar. For example, you can find it in : `sdk/platforms/android-19/data/res/drawable-xxhdpi/ab_transparent_dark_holo.9.png`

The trick is to create your own Widget style by inheriting `Widget.AppCompat.ActionBar` and set the background attribute with your desired png, which does not have the blue line. I use the support library's existing`@drawable/abc_ab_bottom_transparent_dark_holo`. You can find it in the folder `sdk/extras/android/support/v7/appcompat/res/drawable-hdpi/`.

So create the below element in the styles.xml file.

<style name="myActionBar" parent="@style/Widget.AppCompat.ActionBar">
        <item name="android:background">@drawable/abc_ab_bottom_transparent_dark_holo</item>
</style>

Then include this newly created style in your theme(already present in the styles.xml file) :

<style name="AppBaseTheme" parent="@style/Theme.AppCompat">
        <item name="android:actionBarStyle">@style/myActionBar</item>
</style>

To enable this change in older APIs, make the same changes in all 3 folder - `values-v14`, `values-v12` and `values`. One important thing to note is that the "android:" namespace should not be used for the name attributes in the `values-v12` and `values` folders.

Problem

I am using `Theme.AppCompat` for my app to get the dark look. Everything looks good, except the action bar using this theme looks ancient i.e. it has a bright blue bottom divider. I want the action bar to look like it is in `Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar`. Looking at themes.xml, i find : ``` <style name="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar" parent="Theme.Base.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar"> <item name="windowActionBar">true</item> </style> <style name="Theme.Base.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar" parent="Theme.Base.AppCompat.Light"> <item name="actionBarDivider">@drawable/appcompat_divider_dark</item> </style> ``` So i create my own style as below : ``` <style name="myTheme" parent="@style/Theme.AppCompat"> <item name="actionBarDivider">@drawable/appcompat_divider_dark</item> </style> ``` But i get the build error : ``` No resource found that matches the given name (at 'actionBarDivider' with value '@drawable/appcompat_divider_dark') ``` Why can't i use the same drawable that is being used by the framework?

Original source