How to change the background color of a TextView inside of an ActionMode

Question

I have a TextView inside of my action bar, like the following:

I have logic configured to make it overlay the Toolbar with an ActionMode when I long-press on an item in the associated ListView. This ends up looking like the following:

This is basically correct, except for the annoying background around the TextView title in the ActionMode.

I've tried quite a few things, from changing the Widget.ActionMode style in my styles.xml file, to actually setting the actionModeStyle to a specific style. Nothing seems to affect this TextView, though.

I have read through How to change ActionMode background color in Android but it doesn't seem like anything I do has an effect on this background.

Side Note: It would be really nice if there were some way to view the style hierarchy on an Android device as it's rendered. The hierarchy viewer gets me about 1/3 of the way there, but it doesn't have any style information. Anyone know of such a tool that I could use to debug this problem?

styles.xml (only relevant stuff):

<style name="Material" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light">
    <item name="textHeaderMaxLines">@integer/text_header_max_lines</item>
    <item name="trackAbstractMaxLines">@integer/track_abstract_max_lines</item>
    <item name="activatableItemBackground">@drawable/activatable_item_background</item>

    <!-- ActionMode Styles -->
    <item name="android:windowActionModeOverlay">true</item>
    <item name="windowActionModeOverlay">true</item>
    <item name="actionModeBackground">@color/app_green_dark</item>
</style>
<style name="Material.AppBar" parent="Theme.AppCompat.NoActionBar">
    <item name="android:textColorPrimaryInverse">@android:color/white</item>
    <item name="android:actionMenuTextColor">@android:color/white</item>
    <item name="android:textColorSecondary">@android:color/white</item>
    <item name="android:background">@color/app_green</item>
    <item name="android:color">@android:color/white</item>
    <item name="android:textColor">@android:color/white</item>
</style>
<style name="Material.AppBar.ActionMode" parent="Widget.AppCompat.Light.ActionMode.Inverse">
    <item name="android:background">@color/app_green_dark</item>
</style>

Komsa

i am not sure if i understand you problem , if you need to change the background according to your editText State you can do that with state in your editText background – Shoulders

@MuhannadFakhouri It's not an EditText, it's the default TextView that's a title within the ActionMode. I set the text itself with setTitle() on the ActionMode object. I would like to know how to set the style, since the current solutions I gleaned from the other SO posts don't seem to do anything. – Komsa

Answer 1

I think you can try to use the hack way to change the backgroud:

Via Java:

1. Use hierarchyviewer.bat to analyse the layout, focus on the ActionMode view, you can see below: (Title ID: action_bar_title, SubTitle ID:action_bar_subtitle)

2.Find the specify TextView by the ID we found above, and just do whatever you want!

/**
 * To hack the title and subTitle in ActionMode
 */
private void hack() {
    int titleID = Resources.getSystem().getIdentifier("action_bar_title", "id", "android");
    View titleView = getWindow().getDecorView().findViewById(titleID);
    if ((titleView != null) && (titleView instanceof TextView)) {
        ((TextView) titleView).setBackgroundColor(Color.RED);
    }
    int subTitleID = Resources.getSystem().getIdentifier("action_bar_subtitle", "id", "android");
    View subTitleView = getWindow().getDecorView().findViewById(subTitleID);
    if ((subTitleView != null) && (subTitleView instanceof TextView)) {
        ((TextView) subTitleView).setBackgroundColor(Color.GREEN);
    }
}

3.You can call this method when ActionMode create, for example: in onCreateActionMode(). Final result：

Via Style:

Or you can try to set a android:actionModeStyle to control the title and subTitle background, but the android:background seems not work for it:

<!-- Base application theme. -->
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
    <!-- Customize your theme here. -->
    <item name="android:actionModeBackground">@android:color/white</item>
    <item name="android:actionModeStyle">@style/TestActionModeStyle</item>
</style>

<style name="TestActionModeStyle">
    <item name="android:titleTextStyle">@style/TestTitleStyle</item>
    <item name="android:subtitleTextStyle">@style/TestSubTitleStyle</item>
</style>

<style name="TestTitleStyle">
    <item name="android:textColor">@android:color/black</item>
    <item name="android:background">@android:color/holo_red_dark</item>
</style>

<style name="TestSubTitleStyle">
    <item name="android:textColor">@android:color/black</item>
    <item name="android:background">@android:color/holo_green_dark</item>
</style>

Edit:

By the way:

I think the most flexible way is custom you own ActionMode view, this can be easy to achieve, just set a custom view:

@Override
public boolean onCreateActionMode(ActionMode pMode, Menu pMenu) {
    RelativeLayout layout = (RelativeLayout) LayoutInflater.from(mContext).inflate(R.layout.custom_layout, null);
    findView(...);
    initView(...);
    pMode.setCustomView(layout);
    return true;
}

Actinium

Thanks, @Bill. I'll check this out as soon as I have a chance. – Komsa

I ended up creating a custom view, as recommended. Thanks for the answer, @Bill. – Komsa

@Komsa Yes, I use the same way in my project! – Actinium