Theme Sample

Demo of supporting multiple themes within an app. Not an exhaustive example, but includes the following capabilities:

Customizing android namespace attributes
Defining custom theme-specific attributes
Theme overlays
Changing themes at runtime
Backwards compat (minSdkVersion 16)

Android Namespace Customization

Widget Colors

If using AppCompat, ignore android namespace (i.e. colorControlNormal in place of android:colorControlNormal)

Checkbox

Unchecked: android:colorControlNormal
Checked: android:colorAccent
Ripple: android:colorControlHighlight

RadioButton

Deselected: android:colorControlNormal
Selected: android:colorAccent
Ripple: android:colorControlHighlight

Switch (use SwitchCompat for theme colors to be respected)

Off Thumb: colorSwitchThumbNormal
Off Track: android:colorForeground at opacity 30%
On Thumb: colorControlActivated (defaults to colorAccent)
On Track: colorControlActivated at 30% transparency (defaults to colorAccent)
Ripple: android:colorControlHighlight

Buttons

Default (style: Widget.AppCompat.Button)
- Text Appearance: TextAppearance.AppCompat.Widget.Button (android:textAppearanceButton)
  - Color: android:textColorPrimary
  - Size: 14sp
  - Caps: true
Colored (style: Widget.AppCompat.Button.Colored)
- Text Appearance: TextAppearance.AppCompat.Widget.Button.Colored
  - Color: android:textColorPrimary; android:textColorPrimaryInverse (Disabled)
  - Size: 14sp
  - Caps: true
- Background: colorAccent; colorButtonNormal (Disabled)
Colored Borderless (style: Widget.AppCompat.Button.Borderless.Colored)
- Text Appearance: TextAppearance.AppCompat.Widget.Button.Borderless.Colored
  - Color: colorAccent (Colored); android:textColorSecondary (Disabled)
  - Size: 14sp
  - Caps: true
- Background: transparent

Text Appearance

TextAppearances (android:textAppearance) are styles applied specific to text. Android provides different text colors attributes (e.g. android:textColorPrimary) that can be set in your custom theme and will be used with different text appearances. The value of a textColor can either be a simple color, or a selector (e.g. for disabled states).

The main text colors used:

android:textColorPrimary - used for many of the AppCompat TextAppearances such as Headline, Large, Title, Subhead, Body1, Body2, Button, Menu, Action bar.
android:textColorSecondary - used for secondary TextAppearances such as Caption, Medium, Action bar subtitle, and so forth. Material themes use the same RGB values for secondary text as primary, but different opacity/alpha value.
android:textColorTertiary - used for tertiary TextAppearances such as TextAppearance.AppCompat.Small, but generally not used. In Material themes, this is currently the same value as the secondary text color (e.g. @color/secondary_text_default_material_dark).
android:textColorLink - used for links/href attributes
android:textColorHint - used for fields such as EditTexts that are not filled out

Each color has a corresponding inverse:

android:textColorPrimaryInverse
android:textColorSecondaryInverse
android:textColorTertiaryInverse
android:textColorLinkInverse
android:textColorHintInverse

Foreground/Background

Main background colors:

android:windowBackground - used for the application window background
android:colorBackground - the background color of the activity and other components.
android:colorForeground - the background used for Inverse styles/overlays
colorBackgroundFloating - this is use for dialog backgrounds and other floating elements

There's a bunch of other background-related attributes such as android:colorForegroundInverse, android:backgroundDimAmount, and colorBackgroundCacheHint. I would recommend making sure your app theme extends the appropriate parent (i.e. android default Light or Dark themes) and customize from there. Otherwise it can be easy to miss certain attributes and you could end up with light text on light backgrounds.

Custom Attributes

TODO

Limitations