How do I style appcompat-v7 Toolbar like Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar?

Question

I'm trying to recreate the look of Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar with the new support library Toolbar.

If I choose Theme.AppCompat.Light my toolbar will be light and if I choose Theme.AppCompat it will be dark. (Technically you have to use the .NoActionBar version but as far as I can tell the only difference is

<style name="Theme.AppCompat.NoActionBar">
    <item name="windowActionBar">false</item>
    <item name="android:windowNoTitle">true</item>
</style>

Now there's no Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar but naively I thought it'd be good enough to just make my own

<style name="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar.NoActionBar">
    <item name="windowActionBar">false</item>
    <item name="android:windowNoTitle">true</item>
</style>

However with this my toolbars are still Light themed. I've spent hours now trying different combinations of mixing the Dark (base) theme and the Light theme but I just can't find a combination that will let me have light backgrounds on everything but the toolbars.

Is there a way of getting the AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar look with import android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar's?

Answer 1

The recommended way to style the Toolbar for a Light.DarkActionBar clone would be to use Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionbar as parent/app theme and add the following attributes to the style to hide the default ActionBar:

<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
    <item name="windowActionBar">false</item>
    <item name="windowNoTitle">true</item>
</style>

Then use the following as your Toolbar:

<android.support.design.widget.AppBarLayout
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:theme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Dark.ActionBar">

    <android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
        android:id="@+id/toolbar"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="?attr/actionBarSize"
        android:background="?attr/colorPrimary"
        app:popupTheme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light" />
</android.support.design.widget.AppBarLayout>

For further modifications, you would create styles extending ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Dark.ActionBar and ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light replacing the ones within AppBarLayout->android:theme and Toolbar->app:popupTheme. Also note that this will pick up your ?attr/colorPrimary if you have set it in your main style so you might get a different background color.

You will find a good example of this is in the current project template with an Empty Activity of Android Studio (1.4+).