Android: Changing ListView selected colour

When working on my own app I had a lot of trouble trying to find a complete working solution on how to change the highlight colour which is used when a list view item is selected or pressed. There are lots of examples online but I struggled to find one that demonstrated the complete solution. I have managed to get this working with the following.

To begin with I have created my own theme which extends the default android one. The benefit of doing this is that I can make changes in one place and they will affect the entire application. Anything that I do not change in the theme will simply fall back to using the default settings.

Create the theme in styles.xml  - /res/values/styles.xml:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources> <style name="MyTheme" parent="android:Theme"> <item name="android:listViewStyle">@style/MyListView</item> </style> <style name="MyListView"> <item name="android:layout_width">fill_parent</item> <item name="android:layout_height">fill_parent</item> <item name="android:background">@android:color/transparent</item> <item name="android:cacheColorHint">@android:color/transparent</item> <item name="android:listSelector">@drawable/selector</item> </style> <color name="red">#ff0000</color> </resources>


The only change which is made to the default theme is the list view style which is defined in the same xml file along with the colour red. The lisView style references a @drawable/selector. This must also be defined in its own xml file. 

/res/drawable/selector.xml:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> <!-- When Pressed --> <item android:drawable="@drawable/selector_pressed" android:state_pressed="true"/> <!-- When Selected --> <item android:drawable="@drawable/selector_selected" android:state_selected="true" android:state_focused="false" android:state_pressed="false"/> </selector>

The selector specifies two items which are used to determine what is displayed when the listView item is selected and pressed. These must also be set up in their own xml files. 

/res/drawable/selector_pressed.xml:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>   <layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">   <item>   <shape android:shape="rectangle">   <solid android:color="@color/red"/>   <size android:width="1dip"/>   <size android:height="1dip"/>   </shape>   </item>   </layer-list>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>   <layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">   <item>   <shape android:shape="rectangle">   <solid android:color="@color/red"/>   <size android:width="1dip"/>   <size android:height="1dip"/>   </shape>   </item>   </layer-list>

/res/drawable/selector_pressed.xml:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>   <layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">   <item>   <shape android:shape="rectangle">   <solid android:color="@color/red"/>   <size android:width="1dip"/>   <size android:height="1dip"/>   </shape>   </item>   </layer-list>

They define a rectangle which is used to highlight the selected/pressed row. The colour is set to red which was also defined in the styles.xml. The content of the two files are exactly the same which means that when selected or when pressed the item will be highlighted in red. The selector could just reference the same file for the different states but by having them in separate files it allows more control  and demonstrates how it would be possible to set different colours when the item is pressed or selected. 

The final thing to do is update the manifest file to use the custom theme. This can be done on individual activities or on the whole application. 

e.g. 

<application android:icon="@drawable/icon" android:label="@string/app_name" android:theme="@style/MyTheme">

Hopefully if you are trying to do the same thing as me you will find this helpful.