No shadow by default on Toolbar?

Question

I ended up setting my own drop shadow for the toolbar, thought it might helpful for anyone looking for it:

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
              xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
              android:layout_width="wrap_content"
              android:layout_height="wrap_content"
              android:layout_gravity="top"
              android:orientation="vertical">

    <android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar android:id="@+id/toolbar"
                                       android:layout_width="match_parent"
                                       android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                                       android:background="@color/color_alizarin"
                                       android:titleTextAppearance="@color/White"
                                       app:theme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Dark.ActionBar"/>

    <FrameLayout android:layout_width="match_parent"
                 android:layout_height="match_parent">

        <!-- **** Place Your Content Here **** -->

        <View android:layout_width="match_parent"
              android:layout_height="5dp"
              android:background="@drawable/toolbar_dropshadow"/>

    </FrameLayout>

</LinearLayout>

@drawable/toolbar_dropshadow:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" 
       android:shape="rectangle">

    <gradient android:startColor="@android:color/transparent"
              android:endColor="#88333333"
              android:angle="90"/>

</shape>

@color/color_alizarin

<color name="color_alizarin">#e74c3c</color>

Google released the Design Support library a few weeks ago and there is a nifty solution for this problem in this library.

Add the Design Support library as a dependency in build.gradle :

compile 'com.android.support:design:22.2.0'

Add AppBarLayout supplied by the library as a wrapper around your Toolbar layout to generate a drop shadow.

    <android.support.design.widget.AppBarLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content">
       <android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
           .../>
    </android.support.design.widget.AppBarLayout>

Here is the result :

There are lots of other tricks with the design support library.

1. http://inthecheesefactory.com/blog/android-design-support-library-codelab/en
2. http://android-developers.blogspot.in/2015/05/android-design-support-library.html

AndroidX

As above but with dependency:

implementation 'com.google.android.material:material:1.0.0'

and com.google.android.material.appbar.AppBarLayout

You can't use the elevation attribute before API 21 (Android Lollipop). You can however add the shadow programmatically, for example using a custom view placed below the Toolbar.

@layout/toolbar

<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
    android:id="@+id/toolbar"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:background="@color/blue"
    android:minHeight="?attr/actionBarSize"
    app:theme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.ActionBar" />

<View
    android:id="@+id/toolbar_shadow"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="3dp"
    android:background="@drawable/toolbar_dropshadow" />

@drawable/toolbar_dropshadow

<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:shape="rectangle">
    <gradient
        android:startColor="@android:color/transparent"
        android:endColor="#88333333"
        android:angle="90"/> </shape>

in your activity layout <include layout="@layout/toolbar" />

Use /values folders to apply the correct shadow style based on OS version.

For under 5.0 devices, use /values/styles.xml to add windowContentOverlay to the body of your activity:

<style name="MyViewArea">
    <item name="android:foreground">?android:windowContentOverlay</item>
</style>

<style name="MyToolbar">
    <item name="android:background">?attr/colorPrimary</item>
</style>

Then add your own custom shadow by changing your Theme to include:

<item name="android:windowContentOverlay">@drawable/bottom_shadow</item>

You can grab Google's IO app shadow resource here: https://github.com/google/iosched/blob/master/android/src/main/res/drawable-xxhdpi/bottom_shadow.9.png

For 5.0 devices & later, use /values-v21/styles.xml to add elevation to your toolbar using a custom header style:

<style name="MyViewArea">
</style>

<style name="MyToolbar">
    <item name="android:background">?attr/colorPrimary</item>
    <item name="android:elevation">4dp</item>
</style>

Note that in the second case, I had to create an empty MyViewArea style so the windowContentOverlay wouldn't show up too.

[Update: changed resource names and added Google shadow.]

This worked for me very well:

<android.support.v7.widget.CardView
    xmlns:card_view="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:background="@color/primary"
    card_view:cardElevation="4dp"
    card_view:cardCornerRadius="0dp">

    <android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
        android:id="@+id/toolbar"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:background="@color/primary"
        android:minHeight="?attr/actionBarSize" />

</android.support.v7.widget.CardView>

If you are seting the ToolBar as ActionBar then just call:

getSupportActionBar().setElevation(YOUR_ELEVATION);

Note: This must be called after setSupportActionBar(toolbar);

i added

<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
...
android:translationZ="5dp"/>

in toolbar description and it works for me. Using 5.0+