Background
When you creating an Android app from Android studio, studio pre-creates certain files for you. This includes the default style for the application. It looks something like below -
<resources> <!-- Base application theme. --> <style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar"> <!-- Customize your theme here. --> <item name="colorPrimary">@color/colorPrimary</item> <item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/colorPrimaryDark</item> <item name="colorAccent">@color/colorAccent</item> </style> </resources>
Now the question is what is this
- colorPrimary,
- colorPrimaryDark and
- colorAccent
These are all based on material design guidelines. For me, colors are as follows -
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources> <color name="colorPrimary">#3F51B5</color> <color name="colorPrimaryDark">#303F9F</color> <color name="colorAccent">#FF4081</color> </resources>
But you can really choose any color theme you want. For more details, you can see google documentation -
In this post, I will list what each color naming means.
Android material design colors
Following are naming conventions used -
- colorPrimary: The color of the app bar.
- colorPrimaryDark: The color of the status bar and contextual app bars; this is normally a dark version of colorPrimary.
- colorAccent: The color of UI controls such as checkboxes, radio buttons, and edit text boxes.
- windowBackground: The color of the screen background.
- textColorPrimary: The color of UI text in the app bar.
- statusBarColor: The color of the status bar.
- navigationBarColor: The color of the navigation bar.
To visualize refer to the following picture -
You can create and preview your colors here -> https://www.materialpalette.com/
