What is "scrim" in context of Android?

Question

I was reading the blog post on official Android Developers and found this paragraph:

NavigationView takes care of the scrim protection of the status bar for you, ensuring that your NavigationView interacts with the status bar appropriately on API21+ devices.

I found another answer on SO which states in words,

Scrim: A thing that conceals or obscures something.

So, although I understand the above answer normally as you would a sentence, I am unable to visualize it in case of Android views and layouts.

So, can anyone provide a visual example to explain in layman terms, exactly what is it?

Answer 1

It is being used as a metaphor from the theatre. The definition of scrim from Meriam Webster dictionary is:

a theater drop that appears opaque when a scene in front is lighted and transparent or translucent when a scene in back is lighted

So it means the Navigation View makes the status bar appropriately visible depending on the context of the app during runtime (or in the theatre depending on the scene).