How to change color / appearance of EditText select handle / anchor?

Question

So I changed the style of the Holo Theme with the Holo Colors Generator and Action Bar Style Generator to my own color. But when I select text inside an edit text, the "markers" at the selected positions are still blue. How can I change it?

Answer 1

The worst part here was to find the "name" for this item and how it is called inside the theme. So I looked through every drawable in the android SDK folder and finally found the drawables named "text_select_handle_middle", "text_select_handle_left" and "text_select_handle_right".

So the solution is simple: Add these drawables with customized design/color to your drawable folder and add them to your theme style definition like:

<style name="MyCustomTheme" parent="@style/MyNotSoCustomTheme">
        <item name="android:textSelectHandle">@drawable/text_select_handle_middle</item>
        <item name="android:textSelectHandleLeft">@drawable/text_select_handle_left</item>
        <item name="android:textSelectHandleRight">@drawable/text_select_handle_right</item>
</style>

Answer 2

How to do it from code:

try {
    final Field fEditor = TextView.class.getDeclaredField("mEditor");
    fEditor.setAccessible(true);
    final Object editor = fEditor.get(editText);

    final Field fSelectHandleLeft = editor.getClass().getDeclaredField("mSelectHandleLeft");
    final Field fSelectHandleRight =
        editor.getClass().getDeclaredField("mSelectHandleRight");
    final Field fSelectHandleCenter =
        editor.getClass().getDeclaredField("mSelectHandleCenter");

    fSelectHandleLeft.setAccessible(true);
    fSelectHandleRight.setAccessible(true);
    fSelectHandleCenter.setAccessible(true);

    final Resources res = context.getResources();

    fSelectHandleLeft.set(editor, res.getDrawable(R.drawable.text_select_handle_left));
    fSelectHandleRight.set(editor, res.getDrawable(R.drawable.text_select_handle_right));
    fSelectHandleCenter.set(editor, res.getDrawable(R.drawable.text_select_handle_middle));
} catch (final Exception ignored) {
}

Answer 3

I recognize this is really late, but if all you want to do is change the color of the handle, you just need to add the following to your styles.xml file.

<style name="ColoredHandleTheme">
    <item name="colorControlActivated">@color/colorYouWant</item>
</style>

And then just set the theme on whatever activity is holding the EditText which you want to affect.

Or if you want to set it app-wide, you can do the following:

<style name="ColoredHandleThemeForWholeApp">
    <item name="colorAccent">@color/colorYouWant</item>
</style>

And set that theme for the whole app.

Problem solved!

Answer 4

In order to change the color of select handles, you have to override the activated color in your app theme:

<style name="MyCustomTheme" parent="@style/Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar">
    <item name="android:colorControlActivated">@color/customActivatedColor</item>
</style>

Answer 5

You can see these attributes in http://androiddrawables.com/Other.html.

Change your values/styles.xml, for instance:

<style name="AppTheme.Cursor" parent="AppTheme">
    <item name="colorAccent">@color/cursor</item>
</style>

where @color/cursor is added in values/color.xml. After that apply the style to the activity:

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setTheme(R.style.AppTheme_Cursor);
    ...

Visit How to change EditText pointer color (not cursor) for other solutions.

Answer 6

For those who try to handle this from code, you can use answer provided by Jared Rummler for API version less or equal to 28, but from Android Q(API 29) they've added a @UnsupportedAppUsage(maxTargetSdk = Build.VERSION_CODES.P) annotation and it doesn't seem to work on Q+. Instead a new methods where added to EditText:

setTextSelectHandle(R.drawable.test);
setTextSelectHandleLeft(R.drawable.test);
setTextSelectHandleRight(R.drawable.test);

So, to make it work you could do something like this:

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.Q) {
                setTextSelectHandle(R.drawable.test);
                setTextSelectHandleLeft(R.drawable.test);
                setTextSelectHandleRight(R.drawable.test);
            } else {
                try {
                    final Field fEditor = TextView.class.getDeclaredField("mEditor");
                    fEditor.setAccessible(true);
                    final Object editor = fEditor.get(this);

                    final Field fSelectHandleLeft = editor.getClass().getDeclaredField("mSelectHandleLeft");
                    final Field fSelectHandleRight =
                            editor.getClass().getDeclaredField("mSelectHandleRight");
                    final Field fSelectHandleCenter =
                            editor.getClass().getDeclaredField("mSelectHandleCenter");

                    fSelectHandleLeft.setAccessible(true);
                    fSelectHandleRight.setAccessible(true);
                    fSelectHandleCenter.setAccessible(true);

                    final Resources res = getResources();

                    fSelectHandleLeft.set(editor, res.getDrawable(R.drawable.test, null));
                    fSelectHandleRight.set(editor, res.getDrawable(R.drawable.test, null));
                    fSelectHandleCenter.set(editor, res.getDrawable(R.drawable.test, null));
                } catch (final Exception ignored) {
                }
            }

Answer 7

If you want to hide the pointer only on one EditText you can set theme only to it:

styles.xml

<style name="TransparentPointerEditText">
    <item name="colorControlActivated">@android:color/transparent</item>
</style>

usage

<EditText
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:theme="@style/TransparentPointerEditText" />