Change background of ProgressDialog

Question

I am trying to change the background of a ProgressDialog. I searched the net and found various suggestions (like How to remove border from Dialog?), but I am unable to replace the actual background of the ProgressDialog. Instead I get another background (yellow) behind the dialog:

My style:

<style name="StyledDialog" parent="@android:style/Theme.Dialog">
    <item name="android:windowBackground">@drawable/panel_background</item>
</style>

The code that launches the ProgressDialog:

ProgressDialog dialog = new ProgressDialog(this, R.style.StyledDialog);
dialog.setTitle("The title");
dialog.setMessage("The message.");
dialog.show();

The drawable is the same 9 patch that is included in the SDK, I just changed to color. I would greatly appreciate some hints what I am doing wrong.

Brilliance

I think the problem here is that the title, message and image have their own background set rather than being transparent on the background of the dialog. What you'd need to do is iterate over all children of the dialog view and set their background to transparent. – Bund

Answer 1

The comment of Aleks G (below the question) points in the right direction. The appearance of the dialog is defined by a separate style (android:alertDialogStyle). But one cannot apply the style directly to a ProgressDialog. Now, how do I get that yellow background?

Step 1: Define a theme that inherits from Theme.Dialog:

<style name="MyTheme" parent="@android:style/Theme.Dialog">
    <item name="android:alertDialogStyle">@style/CustomAlertDialogStyle</item>
    <item name="android:textColorPrimary">#000000</item>
</style>

There, you can define things like the background color for the whole window (yellow in the question), font colors etc. What's really important is the definition of android:alertDialogStyle. This style controls the appearance of the black area in the question.

Step 2: Define the CustomAlertDialogStyle:

<style name="CustomAlertDialogStyle">
    <item name="android:bottomBright">@color/yellow</item>
    <item name="android:bottomDark">@color/yellow</item>
    <item name="android:bottomMedium">@color/yellow</item>
    <item name="android:centerBright">@color/yellow</item>
    <item name="android:centerDark">@color/yellow</item>
    <item name="android:centerMedium">@color/yellow</item>
    <item name="android:fullBright">@color/yellow</item>
    <item name="android:fullDark">@color/yellow</item>
    <item name="android:topBright">@color/yellow</item>
    <item name="android:topDark">@color/yellow</item>
</style>

This sets the black area in the question to yellow.

Step 3: Apply MyTheme to the ProgressDialog, not CustomAlertDialogStyle:

ProgressDialog dialog = new ProgressDialog(this, R.style.MyTheme);

And here's the result:

The same procedure works with AlertDialog (which is the parent class of ProgressDialog).

Brilliance

Hello Aha Very nice answer but Some border are still black. – Halmstad

Have you figured out how to remove the black border? @ShoebAhmedSiddique – Tacky

Did someone test this on API level 8? Not working for me :'( – Lieutenant

@Tacky you need the dialog.getWindow().setBackgroundDrawableResource(android.R.color.transparent); or <item name="android:windowBackground">@android:color/transparent</item> – Disaccharide

Answer 2

You can try my gist. It basicly sets a color filter on drawable.

import android.content.Context;
import android.graphics.Color;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.widget.ProgressBar;

public class ColoredProgressBar extends ProgressBar {
   public ColoredProgressBar(Context context) {
      super(context);
      if (!isInEditMode())
         init();
   }

   public ColoredProgressBar(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
      super(context, attrs);
      if (!isInEditMode())
         init();
   }

   public ColoredProgressBar(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle) {
      super(context, attrs, defStyle);
      if (!isInEditMode())
         init();
   }

   /**
    * Changes color.
    */
   private void init() {
      getIndeterminateDrawable().setColorFilter(Color.BLUE, android.graphics.PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY);
   }
}

Lamellar