Styling the Android Status Bar

Styling the Android Status Bar

The Android status bar, located at the very top of the screen, displays important system information like time, battery level, and notifications. By default, it often appears with a neutral color. However, you can customize its appearance to match your app’s theme and create a more cohesive user experience. This tutorial will guide you through the process of changing the status bar color in your Android application.

Understanding the Basics

Before diving into the implementation, it’s important to understand that the approach to styling the status bar varies depending on the Android version running on the device.

• Android 4.4 (KitKat) and below: Customization options are limited. You generally cannot directly change the status bar color.
• Android 5.0 (Lollipop) and above: Android introduced a dedicated API to directly control the status bar color. This is the recommended approach for modern Android development.
• Supporting Older Versions: If you need to support older versions, you can use compatibility libraries to achieve a similar effect, although the level of customization may be limited.

Styling the Status Bar on Android Lollipop (API 21) and Above

The easiest way to change the status bar color on Lollipop and newer versions is using the setStatusBarColor() method. Here’s how:

1. Clear Translucent Flags: First, you need to clear any flags that might be causing the status bar to appear translucent.
2. Add Draw System Bar Backgrounds Flag: Add a flag that indicates your app will draw the background for the system bars (status and navigation).
3. Set the Color: Finally, use setStatusBarColor() to set the desired color.

Here’s a code example in Kotlin:

import android.view.Window
import androidx.core.content.ContextCompat

// Inside your Activity's onCreate() method:
val window: Window = window
window.clearFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_TRANSLUCENT_STATUS)
window.addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_DRAWS_SYSTEM_BAR_BACKGROUNDS)
window.statusBarColor = ContextCompat.getColor(this, R.color.my_statusbar_color)

And here’s the equivalent in Java:

import android.view.Window;
import android.view.WindowManager;
import androidx.core.content.ContextCompat;

// Inside your Activity's onCreate() method:
Window window = getWindow();
window.clearFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_TRANSLUCENT_STATUS);
window.addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_DRAWS_SYSTEM_BAR_BACKGROUNDS);
window.setStatusBarColor(ContextCompat.getColor(this, R.color.my_statusbar_color));

Replace R.color.my_statusbar_color with the actual color resource you want to use. Make sure you’ve defined this color in your colors.xml file.

Styling Through Themes (Recommended)

A cleaner and more maintainable approach is to define the status bar color in your application’s theme. This way, the color is consistent throughout your app, and you don’t have to repeat the code in every Activity.

1. Modify styles.xml: Open your values/styles.xml file.
2. Add android:statusBarColor: Add the android:statusBarColor attribute to your app’s primary theme.

<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light">
    <item name="colorPrimary">@color/color_primary</item>
    <item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/color_secondary</item>
    <item name="colorAccent">@color/color_accent</item>
    <item name="android:statusBarColor">@color/color_primary</item>
</style>

If you want to support older devices and need a single styles.xml file, you can use the tools namespace to target specific APIs:

<item name="android:statusBarColor" tools:targetApi="lollipop">@color/color_primary</item>

This tells the Android build system to only apply this attribute when compiling for API level 21 (Lollipop) or higher.

For even finer control and more complex theme customizations, you can create a separate theme specifically for activities that require a different status bar color.

Supporting Older Android Versions

While direct status bar color customization isn’t available on versions older than Lollipop, you can create a visually similar effect by using a translucent status bar and drawing a custom view behind it. This is more complex and might not perfectly match the desired look, but it can provide a better user experience on older devices. However, this is generally not recommended unless absolutely necessary due to the added complexity.

By following these steps, you can effectively style the Android status bar to create a more polished and visually appealing user experience in your application.