Android - how to set background color of all screens?

Question

What is the best practice to maintain styles of fonts and colors. I made a colors.xml file which I have used to change colors on seperate elements like buttons, but I am not sure how Android wants developers to organize their styles.

For example, I would like all screens to have the same background color. How do I do that? Is it something I need to specify for each Activity layout xml? Or elsewhere? How do I accomplish it?

you create [styles](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html) and apply them to your UI elements — zapl, Apr 14 '12 at 19:55
@zapl rigth its what I was doing. What I was wondering was how to apply a style to the entire screen. Like a background color for every screen? — GeekedOut, Apr 14 '12 at 20:03
you can either apply some background theme to each topmost LinearLayout (or whatever you use) or you can do that via a [theme for your activity](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html#ApplyATheme) — zapl, Apr 14 '12 at 20:06

NPike · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-22T17:19:32.937

218

A quick and easy way to make sure every activity has the same background color, is to create a theme for your activities to use. That theme would specify the android:windowBackground.

First define the color in values/colors.xml

<resources>
    <color name="background">#FF0000 </color>
</resources>

Create a themes.xml file in res/values that references that color:

<resources>
 <style name="MyTheme" parent="@android:style/Theme.Light"> 
  <item name="android:windowBackground">@color/background</item>
 </style>
</resources>

... and then in your AndroidManifest.xml specify this as the theme for your activities to use.

 <activity
        android:name=".MyActivity"
        android:theme="@style/MyTheme" />

edited Dec 22 '13 at 17:19

answered Apr 14 '12 at 20:21

NPike

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I got an error when implementing this code in the themes.xml as it doesn't recognise the hex color code here: #FF0000 – Brian Var Mar 15 '13 at 13:36
9

just put the color hex in a @color resource, then reference it thus @color/my_background – Chris.D May 22 '13 at 23:19
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this is not the right answer. please correct your answer to match Chris's comment NPike – Joris Weimar Dec 21 '13 at 15:32
Edit the style in `styles.xml` instead. – Jakub Bláha May 23 '19 at 17:41
windowBackground has no effect. I think this flag is only to set / change drawables not colors! – dudi Apr 27 '20 at 09:00

score 20 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 19 '15 at 11:39

20

Update your android studio to 1.4 it has inbuilt theme editor. as you can see in below image

answered Oct 19 '15 at 11:39

kundan roy

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how to open Theme Editir in android 2.1 preview version – Sonu Kumar Apr 08 '16 at 06:43
open styles.xml file and you will see open in editor text at Top Right corner click on that. – kundan roy Apr 08 '16 at 07:19
But my case hide and problem solve it when restart android studio thank you show mach – Sonu Kumar Apr 08 '16 at 08:20
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To open it go to Tools -> Android -> Theme Editor. – Albert Vila Calvo Sep 19 '16 at 11:23
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The Editor is out of support. Since Android Studio 3.3 it is removed. – finder2 Sep 13 '19 at 09:16

score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 01 '15 at 16:20

9

You can also set the background at the application level in AndroidManifest.xml

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

(Note: I cannot this as a comment of the accepted answer as my reputation is too low).

answered Sep 01 '15 at 16:20

chris

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Android - how to set background color of all screens?

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