Change status bar color with AppCompat ActionBarActivity

Question

In one of my Activities, I changed the Toolbar color using Palette. But on 5.0 devices using ActionBarActivity the status bar color is the color of my colorPrimaryDark in my activity theme so I have 2 very different colors and it does not look good.

I realize that in 5.0 you can use Window.setStatusBarColor() but ActionBarActivity does not have this.

so my question is in 5.0 how can I change the status bar color with ActionBarActivity?

Answer 1

I'm not sure I understand the problem.

I you want to change the status bar color programmatically (and provided the device has Android 5.0) then you can use Window.setStatusBarColor(). It shouldn't make a difference whether the activity is derived from Activity or ActionBarActivity.

Just try doing:

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP) {
    Window window = getWindow();
    window.addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_DRAWS_SYSTEM_BAR_BACKGROUNDS);
    window.setStatusBarColor(Color.BLUE);
}

Just tested this with ActionBarActivity and it works alright.

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Note: Setting the FLAG_DRAWS_SYSTEM_BAR_BACKGROUNDS flag programmatically is not necessary if your values-v21 styles file has it set already, via:

    <item name="android:windowDrawsSystemBarBackgrounds">true</item>