How to change textcolor of switch in Android

Question

I'm creating an application which uses Android 4.0. I'm wondering if it is possible to change the text color of the text in a switch.

I've tried setting the text color, but it doesn't work.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Benilda

There's no specific code, its just a switch in the layout, which is found by ID. And in the code i set the switch.setTextColor(Color.WHITE); – Benilda

Answer 1

You must use android:switchTextAppearance attribute, eg:

android:switchTextAppearance="@style/SwitchTextAppearance"

and in styles:

<style name="SwitchTextAppearance" parent="@android:style/TextAppearance.Holo.Small">
    <item name="android:textColor">@color/my_switch_color</item>
</style>

you can also do it in code, also using above styles:

mySwitch.setSwitchTextAppearance(getActivity(), R.style.SwitchTextAppearance);

---

...and as for setTextColor and Switch - this color will be used if your SwitchTextAppearance style doesn't provide a textColor

you can check it in Switch source code in setSwitchTextAppearance:

    ColorStateList colors;
    int ts;

    colors = appearance.getColorStateList(com.android.internal.R.styleable.
            TextAppearance_textColor);
    if (colors != null) {
        mTextColors = colors;
    } else {
        // If no color set in TextAppearance, default to the view's textColor
        mTextColors = getTextColors();
    }

    ts = appearance.getDimensionPixelSize(com.android.internal.R.styleable.
            TextAppearance_textSize, 0);
    if (ts != 0) {
        if (ts != mTextPaint.getTextSize()) {
            mTextPaint.setTextSize(ts);
            requestLayout();
        }
    }

Instructions

I wonder why couldn't they just make setTextColor work normally instead of all this bloat. – Thigpen

Answer 2

I think you have to look at the theme which you are using for your application. Because the color of the switch is the responsibility of the theme, afaik. So I would suggest you have a look on how you can change the settings of a theme. Or you could create a custom theme with the new colors.

Gnathion

Answer 3

TextView.setTextColor() takes an int representing the color (eg. 0xFFF5DC49) not the resource id from the xml file. In an activity, you can do something like:

textView1.setTextColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.mycolor))

outside of an activity you'll need a Context eg.

textView1.setTextColor(context.getResources().getColor(R.color.mycolor))

For more refer this

Orren

Hello, first thanks for your response! This isn't the answer that I'm looking for, i got it working for textviews and editTexts. But I need it for a switch and I'm not sure how.. – Benilda

Actually setTextColor is not used for Switch, unless the style provided for android:switchTextAppearance doesn't define a textColor – Instructions