A Status Bar in Android is an eye-catching part of the screen, all of the notification indication, battery life, time, connection strength, and plenty of things shows here. An Android user may look at a status bar multiple times while using an Android application. It is a very essential part of the design that the color of the status bar should follow the color combination of the layout. You can look out to many android apps on your phone and can see how they changed it according to its primary colors. There can be multiple ways for changing the status bar color but we are going to tell you about the best hand-picked two methods which you can use either in Java or Kotlin.
Method 1: Creating a New Theme
You can follow this method in apps that are built with Kotlin or Java. It will work in both.
Step 1: Open Android Studio and start a new project by selecting an empty activity. Give it a name of your choice, then select your language and API level. At last click on finish.
Step 2: Find an XML file called styles.xml by navigating res/values/styles.xml.
Step 3: Find another XML file by navigating res/values/colors.xml, and also add that color here which you want to change for the status bar.
Step 4: Now in the style.xml file, add the below code just before the </resources> tag and change the colors of it as your choice. ColorPrimaryDark is always going to be responsible for your status bar color.
XML
<!-- Defined a new style with three items of color. --><style name="DemoTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar"><!-- Customize your theme here. --><item name="colorPrimary">@color/colorPrimary</item> <!-- Defining that new color in ColorPrimaryDark --><item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/colorOfStatusBar</item><item name="colorAccent">@color/colorAccent</item></style> |
You can do the same with android:statusBarColor but it will work only in above API Level 21. ColorPrimaryDark for the status bar will also not support in API Level 19. By default in most of the API Levels, ColorPrimaryDark will be the default color for statusBarColor, So it is good to go with changing ColorPrimaryDark.
Tip: You can create multiple themes and you can use them in any activity. In any theme, There is a set of colors that needs to be defined, you can also create new colors in the colors.xml file in the same directory and use it on the styles.xml file.
Step 6: Now go to the manifest/AndroidManifest.xml and here search the activity for which you want to apply that theme or change the color of the status bar. and add an attribute android:theme=”@style/DemoTheme”.
That’s done! Check your application by running it on an emulator or a physical device.
Method 2: Using setStatusBarColor Method
This method can be only used in the above API Level 21. Officially status bar color is not supporting below API Level 21. Although, Here we added an if condition, because in case if you haven’t selected above or equal to API 21 then it will check the android API Version, and then it will execute the code. It will not change the color of the status bar is below API Level 21 but the rest code will work well.
Step 1: After opening the android studio and creating a new project with an empty activity.
Step 2: Navigate to res/values/colors.xml, and add a color that you want to change for the status bar.
Step 3: In your MainActivity, add this code in your onCreate method. Don’t forget to replace your desired color with colorName.
Java
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 21) { Window window = this.getWindow(); window.addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_DRAWS_SYSTEM_BAR_BACKGROUNDS); window.clearFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_TRANSLUCENT_STATUS); window.setStatusBarColor(this.getResources().getColor(R.color.colorPrimaryDark)); } |
Kotlin
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 21) { val window = this.window window.addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_DRAWS_SYSTEM_BAR_BACKGROUNDS) window.clearFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_TRANSLUCENT_STATUS) window.statusBarColor = this.resources.getColor(R.color.colorPrimaryDark) } |
Step 4: Try running your application on an android emulator or a physical device. See the changes.
