How to change the Backgound and Text color of AppCompat Light DarkActionBar Theme

Here is a simple way how to change the background and text color on the Android AppCompat Light DarkActionBar.
Here is the final result:

Let say your app has following name :<MyTheme>

and you are using the Andoird 3.0 version.
In res/AndoidManifest.xml you will have following code:

 &lt;uses-sdk 
     android:minSdkVersion="14" 
     android:targetSdkVersion="16" /&gt;

<uses-sdk

android:minSdkVersion="14"

android:targetSdkVersion="16" />

1. Add following code in the res/values/styles.xml file:

&lt;style name="MyTheme"  parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar"&gt;
         &lt;item name="actionBarStyle"&gt;@style/MyActionBar&lt;/item&gt;
    &lt;/style&gt;

    &lt;style name="MyActionBar" parent="@style/Widget.AppCompat.ActionBar.Solid"&gt;
            &lt;item name="titleTextStyle"&gt;@style/MyTitleTextStyle&lt;/item&gt;
            &lt;item name="background"&gt;@color/actionBarBg&lt;/item&gt;
    &lt;/style&gt;
    
    &lt;style name="MyTitleTextStyle"  parent="@style/TextAppearance.AppCompat.Widget.ActionBar.Title"&gt;
        &lt;item name="android:textColor"&gt;@color/actionBarText&lt;/item&gt;
    &lt;/style&gt;

<item name="actionBarStyle">@style/MyActionBar</item>

</style>

<item name="titleTextStyle">@style/MyTitleTextStyle</item>

<item name="background">@color/actionBarBg</item>

</style>

<item name="android:textColor">@color/actionBarText</item>

</style>

2. Create the color definition file under: res/values/colors.xml and add following code:

&lt;resources&gt; 
 &lt;!-- White text color  --&gt; 
 &lt;color name="actionBarText"&gt;#FFFFFF&lt;/color&gt; 
   
 &lt;!-- facebook blue color --&gt;  
 &lt;color name="actionBarBg"&gt;#45619D&lt;/color&gt; 
  
&lt;/resources&gt;

<color name="actionBarText">#FFFFFF</color>

</resources>

That’s all.

In the next tutorial we will see How to show icons in ActionBar overflow menu