White background during app launch

Question

I want to get rid of the white color during the short period when my app is launching but the content isn't displayed, yet.

My main activity is using a style (from the Manifest) that extends @style/Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar with the background set to <item name="android:background">@android:color/transparent</item>. Nowhere in my layout do I use a white background color, yet it appears for a brief moment during app launch.

In the HierarchyViewer I exported the layers and checked back that there is really no white solid in the layout hierarchy.

What setting controls the background color before the layout is drawn? Thanks.

Answer 1

There's another background attribute in your theme - windowBackground, and you implicitly set it to white by inheriting your style from @style/Theme.Sherlock.Light.DarkActionBar (notice the .Light. part in the name).

You can either use dark version of theme or set it explicitly by including windowBackground in your style definition:

<item name="android:windowBackground">@color/your_color</item>