How can I create an android activity with back arrow as shown in the picture

Question

activity actionbar with back arrow similar to android material design menu

Answer 1

You can add the following to your activity tag inside your manifest.xml file:

android:parentActivityName=".screens.MainActivity"

This will automatically place a back arrow inside your Activity and navigate to MainActivity when pressed.

Note This will only work in Android 4.1 or greater:

Beginning in Android 4.1 (API level 16), you can declare the logical parent of each activity by specifying the android:parentActivityName attribute in the element.

If your app targets Android 4.0 or before you should include the support library and add the following to your activity inside the manifest.xml:

<meta-data
        android:name="android.support.PARENT_ACTIVITY"
        android:value=".screens.MainActivity" />

You will then need to allow Up navigation by adding this to your Activity:

getActionBar().setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);

For more information please see the Android docs.