Android change Material elevation shadow color

Question

is it possible to change the shadow color produced by the xml elevation property? I want the shadow be dynamically changed by code.

Answer 1

I know that this question is very old and probably the author doesn't need the answer anymore. I'll just leave it here so others can find it.

Lollipop's elevation system doesn't support colored shadows.

But, if you need colored shadows, it's possible to get them using Carbon. It's a kind-of support library for Material Design and in the most recent version there is an option to change shadow color. There's a ton of nice designs on Behance featuring colored shadows and I thought it would be nice to have them despite lack of such feature in Android. It's important to note that colored shadows are emulated on all Android versions, on 5.0+ too.

https://github.com/ZieIony/Carbon

The following image and code can be found in Carbon's samples.

Code:

<carbon.widget.LinearLayout     android:layout_width="match_parent"     android:layout_height="wrap_content"     android:orientation="horizontal">      <carbon.widget.Button         android:layout_width="56dp"         android:layout_height="56dp"         android:layout_margin="@dimen/carbon_padding"         android:background="#ffffff"         app:carbon_cornerRadius="2dp"         app:carbon_elevation="8dp"         app:carbon_elevationShadowColor="@color/carbon_red_700"/>  </carbon.widget.LinearLayout> 

"CardView":

<carbon.widget.LinearLayout     android:layout_width="match_parent"     android:layout_height="wrap_content"     android:orientation="horizontal">      <carbon.widget.LinearLayout         android:layout_width="match_parent"         android:layout_height="160dp"         android:layout_margin="@dimen/carbon_margin"         android:background="#ffffff"         app:carbon_cornerRadius="2dp"         app:carbon_elevation="8dp"         app:carbon_elevationShadowColor="@color/carbon_red_700">          <carbon.widget.ImageView             android:layout_width="match_parent"             android:layout_height="0dp"             android:layout_weight="1"             android:src="@drawable/test_image"/>          <carbon.widget.TextView             android:layout_width="match_parent"             android:layout_height="wrap_content"             android:text="test text"/>     </carbon.widget.LinearLayout>  </carbon.widget.LinearLayout> 

Answer 2

Starting API 28 (Pie) View#setOutlineAmbientShadowColor(int color) and View#setOutlineSpotShadowColor(int color) are available in the View class.

If you use elevation on your View, you can use both methods to change the color of the shadow.