How to change the background color of Action Bar&#

Question

I'd like to change the background color of the option (overflow) menu in Android 4.2. I have tried all the methods but it is still showing the default color set by the theme. I used the following code & XML configs.

MainActivity.java

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

@SuppressLint("NewApi")
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

    getActionBar().setIcon(R.drawable.ic_launcher);     
    getActionBar().setTitle("Sample Menu");
    getActionBar().setBackgroundDrawable(new 
               ColorDrawable(Color.parseColor("#33B5E5"))); 

    int titleId = Resources.getSystem().getIdentifier("action_bar_title", "id", "android");
    TextView titleText = (TextView)findViewById(titleId);
    titleText.setTextColor(Color.parseColor("#ffffff"));

}

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    // Inflate the menu; this adds items to the action bar if it is present.
    getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.main, menu);
    setMenuBackground();
    return true;
}

protected void setMenuBackground(){                     
    // Log.d(TAG, "Enterting setMenuBackGround");  
    getLayoutInflater().setFactory( new Factory() { 

        @Override
        public View onCreateView(String name, Context context,
                AttributeSet attrs) {
            if ( name.equalsIgnoreCase( "com.android.internal.view.menu.IconMenuItemView" ) ) {
                try { // Ask our inflater to create the view  
                    LayoutInflater f = getLayoutInflater();  
                    final View view = f.createView( name, null, attrs );  
                    /* The background gets refreshed each time a new item is added the options menu.  
                    * So each time Android applies the default background we need to set our own  
                    * background. This is done using a thread giving the background change as runnable 
                    * object */
                    new Handler().post( new Runnable() {  
                        public void run () {  
                            // sets the background color   
                            view.setBackgroundResource( R.color.menubg);
                            // sets the text color              
                            ((TextView) view).setTextColor(Color.WHITE);
                            // sets the text size              
                            ((TextView) view).setTextSize(18);
            }
                    } );  
                return view;
            }
        catch ( InflateException e ) {}
        catch ( ClassNotFoundException e ) {}  
    } 
            return null;
        }});
}

}

Menu.xml

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >

<item
    android:id="@+id/action_settings"
    android:icon="@drawable/menu"
    android:showAsAction="always"
    android:title="@string/action_settings">
    <menu>
        <item
            android:id="@+id/item1"             
            android:showAsAction="always"
            android:title="@string/item1" />
        <item
            android:id="@+id/item2"             
            android:showAsAction="always"
            android:title="@string/item2" />
        <item
            android:id="@+id/item3"
            android:showAsAction="always"
            android:title="@string/item3" />
        <item
            android:id="@+id/item4"
            android:showAsAction="always"
            android:title="@string/item4" />
    </menu>
</item>

</menu>

color.xml

<color name="menubg">#33B5E5</color>

The above setMenuBackground is not taking any effect:

In the above picture, I want to change the menu background from black to the blue color in the Action Bar. How can I achieve this, and what I did do wrong?

Answer 1

<style name="customTheme" parent="any_parent_theme">
    <item name="android:itemBackground">#424242</item>
    <item name="android:itemTextAppearance">@style/TextAppearance</item>
</style>

<style name="TextAppearance">
    <item name="android:textColor">#E9E2BF</item>
</style>

Answer 2

The Action Bar Style Generator, suggested by Sunny, is very useful, but it generates a lot of files, most of which are irrelevant if you only want to change the background colour.

So, I dug deeper into the zip it generates, and tried to narrow down what are the parts that matter, so I can make the minimum amount of changes to my app. Below is what I found out.

---

In the style generator, the relevant setting is Popup color, which affects "Overflow menu, submenu and spinner panel background".

Go on and generate the zip, but out of all the files generated, you only really need one image, menu_dropdown_panel_example.9.png, which looks something like this:

So, add the different resolution versions of it to res/drawable-*. (And perhaps rename them to menu_dropdown_panel.9.png.)

Then, as an example, in res/values/themes.xml you would have the following, with android:popupMenuStyle and android:popupBackground being the key settings.

<resources>

    <style name="MyAppActionBarTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Light">
        <item name="android:popupMenuStyle">@style/MyApp.PopupMenu</item>
        <item name="android:actionBarStyle">@style/MyApp.ActionBar</item>
    </style>

    <!-- The beef: background color for Action Bar overflow menu -->
    <style name="MyApp.PopupMenu" parent="android:Widget.Holo.Light.ListPopupWindow">
        <item name="android:popupBackground">@drawable/menu_dropdown_panel</item>
    </style>

    <!-- Bonus: if you want to style whole Action Bar, not just the menu -->
    <style name="MyApp.ActionBar" parent="android:Widget.Holo.Light.ActionBar.Solid">
        <!-- Blue background color & black bottom border -->
        <item name="android:background">@drawable/blue_action_bar_background</item>
    </style>   

</resources>

And, of course, in AndroidManifest.xml:

<application
    android:theme="@style/MyAppActionBarTheme" 
    ... >

What you get with this setup:

Note that I'm using Theme.Holo.Light as the base theme. If you use Theme.Holo (Holo Dark), there's an additional step needed as this answer describes!

Also, if you (like me) wanted to style the whole Action Bar, not just the menu, put something like this in res/drawable/blue_action_bar_background.xml:

<!-- Bonus: if you want to style whole Action Bar, not just the menu -->
<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >

    <item>
        <shape android:shape="rectangle">
            <stroke android:width="2dp" android:color="#FF000000" />
            <solid android:color="#FF2070B0" />                   
        </shape>
    </item>

    <item android:bottom="2dp">
        <shape android:shape="rectangle">
            <stroke android:width="2dp" android:color="#FF2070B0" />
            <solid android:color="#00000000" />
            <padding android:bottom="2dp" />
        </shape>
    </item>

</layer-list>

Works great at least on Android 4.0+ (API level 14+).

Answer 3

Within your app theme you can set the android:itemBackground property to change the color of the action menu.

For example:

<style name="AppThemeDark" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
        <item name="colorPrimary">@color/drk_colorPrimary</item>
        <item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/drk_colorPrimaryDark</item>
        <item name="colorAccent">@color/drk_colorAccent</item>
        <item name="actionBarStyle">@style/NoTitle</item>
        <item name="windowNoTitle">true</item>
        <item name="android:textColor">@color/white</item>

        <!-- THIS IS WHERE YOU CHANGE THE COLOR -->
        <item name="android:itemBackground">@color/drk_colorPrimary</item>
</style>