Change navigation bar color, Android

Question

How can I change the color/transparency of the Navigation Bar from black to a generic color in pre-Lollipop devices (e.g. the color of the status bar or of the action bar)?

Can I do it using AppCompat or is it only possible for SDK 21?

Answer 1

You can set the attribute navigationBarColor in an AppCompat theme, or android:navigationBarColor in a native v21 theme.

<style name="AppTheme" parent="@style/Theme.AppCompat.Light">
    ...
    <item name="navigationBarColor">#123456</item>
</style>

https://developer.android.com/training/material/theme.html#StatusBar

Note that this does not work on Pre-Lollipop devices, since this feature needs to be supported by the system, which is not the case on Android 4.4 or older.

Answer 2

Another programmatically way:

window.addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_DRAWS_SYSTEM_BAR_BACKGROUNDS);
window.setStatusBarColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.DarkOrange));
window.setNavigationBarColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.red));

Further, to change your status bar color, add the following line:

window.setStatusBarColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.green));