Android: Where is the Spinner widget's text color attribute hiding?

Question

I'm trying to change the text color of the single item that is displayed in the spinner button after you select an item from the dropdown. I've been perusing the themes.xml and styles.xml in the Android SDK for an hour now, and I can't seem to find where the Spinner is getting the color value from.

To clarify, I'm NOT trying to change the color of a dropdown item, I'm trying to change the color of the spinner's displayed text when there is no dropdown. I guess you could call it the spinner's 'button' text.

there is a color and background for the text in a spinner. you can set it in SpinnerAdapter.getView(). — Ray Tayek, Mar 03 '12 at 00:47

CaseyB · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-28T02:25:53.673

109

I think it's probably this bit in styles.xml

<style name="Widget.TextView.SpinnerItem">
    <item name="android:textAppearance">@style/TextAppearance.Widget.TextView.SpinnerItem</item>
</style>
<style name="Widget.DropDownItem.Spinner">
    <item name="android:checkMark">?android:attr/listChoiceIndicatorSingle</item>
</style>

-= EDIT =- Here's the result: enter image description here

and here's how it's done:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <style name="MooTheme" parent="android:Theme">
        <item name="android:spinnerItemStyle">@style/MooSpinnerItem</item>
    </style>

    <style name="MooSpinnerItem" parent="android:Widget.TextView.SpinnerItem">
        <item name="android:textAppearance">@style/MooTextAppearanceSpinnerItem</item>
    </style>

    <style name="MooTextAppearanceSpinnerItem" parent="android:TextAppearance.Widget.TextView.SpinnerItem">
        <item name="android:textColor">#F00</item>
    </style>
</resources>

Then just add this to the application tag in your AndroidManifest.xml

android:theme="@style/MooTheme"

edited May 28 '11 at 02:25

answered May 28 '11 at 01:55

CaseyB

24,780
14
77
112

That's for the spinner items that go in the dropdown. I need it for the text in the actual spinner. – Christopher Perry May 28 '11 at 02:06
That is the actual spinner. I am editing my answer with the full implementation. – CaseyB May 28 '11 at 02:23
1

I don't understand, because this says it's for the spinner items. How does it apply this to the spinner? I see that it actually does work, so I'm going to mark yours as the answer, but I'm really curious how this is actually working because I was looking in the Spinner code to see where the text is being displayed and was at a loss to find it. – Christopher Perry May 28 '11 at 02:30
can you tell me how to do custom triangle on the right of the spnner? – pengwang May 30 '11 at 05:57
1

@pengwang it's part of the nine patch background drawable for Spinner. – Christopher Perry Dec 08 '11 at 16:21
For [CaseyB](http://stackoverflow.com/users/236136/caseyb): **Can u please be more specific on instructions?** **Firstly**, if i insert the first two style tags in my style.xml file, it asks me for the parent.. **Secondly**, adding the three style tags given below the above screenshot and then adding adndroid:theme="@style/MooTheme" has no effect WHATSOEVER on my spinner... **Thirdly**, you haven't mentioned what kind of adapter i must have for my spinner... – Siddhant Dec 08 '11 at 07:11
The above works for me. But only when I do not set the "android:textColor" attribute in the application theme (MooTheme above). Any way of setting the spinner item colour different than the application SpinnerItem colour. – Diederik Oct 22 '12 at 11:11
What if I want to change the style of some spinners and not all spinners in the application? – Stephen Lynx Jul 05 '13 at 23:27
Then you only apply the theme to this one spinner – An-droid May 23 '14 at 13:55
Could you please explain a bit more about what each style is for? what makes the text red? – olfek Sep 09 '18 at 08:01

Blundell · Answer 2 · 2012-04-20T08:06:16.197

Yeah CaseyB is correct.

Here's how I set the spinner text color, a little simple example:

styles.xml

    <style name="Theme.NoTitleBar.WithColoredSpinners" parent="@android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar">
        <item name="android:spinnerItemStyle">@style/SpinnerItem</item>
        <item name="android:spinnerDropDownItemStyle">@style/SpinnerItem.DropDownItem</item>
    </style>

    <style name="SpinnerItem" parent="@android:style/Widget.TextView.SpinnerItem">
        <item name="android:textColor">#00FF00</item>
    </style>

    <style name="SpinnerItem.DropDownItem" parent="@android:style/Widget.DropDownItem.Spinner">
        <item name="android:textColor">#FF0000</item>
    </style>

</resources>

Then in your manifest:

<application
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
        android:label="@string/app_name"
        android:theme="@style/Theme.NoTitleBar.WithColoredSpinners" >

The text on the outside of all your spinners will now be Green and the text on the dropdowns will be red.

For AppCompat theme just remove `android:` like this `@style/mySpinnerItemStyle` — Roman_D, Sep 28 '16 at 07:03

score 30 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 18 '12 at 13:47

I did this using another simple technique,

copy the simple_spinner_item.xml and simple_spinner_dropdown_item.xml from Android res/layout folder and copy them in your project.

Then modify the following lines

ArrayAdapter<CharSequence> adapter = ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(this, R.array.planets_array, Android.R.layout.simple_spinner_item);
adapter.setDropDownViewResource(Android.R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item);
spinnerSubject.setAdapter(adapter);

as:

ArrayAdapter<CharSequence> adapter = ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(this, R.array.planets_array, R.layout.simple_spinner_item);
adapter.setDropDownViewResource(R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item);
spinnerSubject.setAdapter(adapter);

The rest is easy, you can now edit the simple_spinner_item.xml to edit the appearence of one visible item on the spinner widget, and edit the simple_spinner_dropdown_item.xml to change the appearance of drop down list.

For example, my activity layout contains:

<Spinner
android:id="@+id/mo_spinnerSubject"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_marginTop="5dp"
android:background="@drawable/spinnerset_background" />

and my simple_spinner_item.xml now contains:

<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="@android:id/text1"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:singleLine="true"
android:textColor="@color/custom_white"
android:textSize="16sp" />

and the simple_spinner_dropdown_item.xml looks like:

<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="@android:id/text1"
style="?android:attr/spinnerDropDownItemStyle"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="?android:attr/listPreferredItemHeight"
android:background="@color/custom_black"
android:ellipsize="marquee"
android:singleLine="true"
android:textColor="@color/custom_white" />

Nice example. I couldn't get the others to work in my project, but this was easy and worked like a charm. — raider33, Oct 29 '13 at 02:11
This is also a solution that doesn't force the new style globally, like the others do. — Gerhard Burger, Feb 02 '15 at 12:02

score 28 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 15 '13 at 04:45

28

You can use setOnItemSelectedListener on Spinner object,

spinnerObject.setOnItemSelectedListener(new AdapterView.OnItemSelectedListener() {
    @Override
    public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> parentView, View selectedItemView, int position, long id) {
        ((TextView)parentView.getChildAt(0)).setTextColor(Color.rgb(249, 249, 249));
        // OR ((TextView)parentView.getChildAt(0)).setTextColor(Color.RED);
    }
});

edited Mar 15 '13 at 04:45

Community

1
1

answered Jan 31 '12 at 11:34

Rukmal Dias

3,242
1
34
28

2

this is most simplest method here :) – Vasil Valchev Mar 07 '13 at 02:24
1

I find I have to check that parent has children first, otherwise there is a NullPointerException raised whenever i change the device's orientation. – David Kibblewhite Aug 13 '14 at 08:34
This may be the best solution if the color is set only for this one spinner and not globally – bkurzius Mar 02 '15 at 22:06
Ideally if someone wants to reutilise their Spinner Adapter, this is the best way to do. Thanks worked that way! – sud007 Jun 15 '17 at 12:32
NPE 'void android.widget.TextView.setTextColor(int)' – vlasentiy Jul 26 '17 at 08:19

Pre_hacker · Answer 5 · 2017-10-24T09:38:16.787

its very simple actually. I was looking for all over you just need to create style and set on spinner

first create your theme in Style.xml

 <style name="spinnerTheme" parent="android:Theme">
    <item name="android:textColor">@color/gray_dark</item>
</style>

then in your xml where you've set your spinner add this :

android:theme="@style/spinnerTheme"

                       <Spinner
                        android:id="@+id/spinner"
                        android:layout_width="match_parent"
                        android:layout_height="50dp"
                        android:padding="10dp"
                        android:paddingBottom="5dp"
                        android:paddingLeft="10dp"
                        android:layout_span="3"
                        android:layout_weight="1.3"
                        android:theme="@style/spinnerTheme"
                        android:textSize="12sp"
                        android:spinnerMode="dialog"
                        android:clickable="false"/>

Enjoy Coding

Excellent! I used @android:color/holo_orange_light – pollaris Jan 27 '18 at 00:24 — pollaris, Jan 27 '18 at 00:24
This also changes the textcolor for both item and dropdown – ymerdrengene Apr 08 '18 at 16:24 — ymerdrengene, Apr 08 '18 at 16:24

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 12 '18 at 09:08

Can change the text colour by overriding the getView method as follows:

new ArrayAdapter<String>(getContext(), android.R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item, list()){
                @Override
                public View getView(int position, View convertView, @NonNull ViewGroup parent) {
                    View view = super.getView(position, convertView, parent);
                    //change the color to which ever you want                    
                    ((CheckedTextView) view).setTextColor(Color.RED);
                    return view;
              }

JoxTraex · Answer 7 · 2011-05-28T01:50:58.267

1

I dont think there is a color associated with the text. Its most likely predefined in the android code, might have to just make your own if you want to change the spinner's color.

This would include changing the ondraw() method and you draw the spinner how you would like it to look.

Only thing I think could potentially solve this issue is the style property of the spinner.

Source: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/Spinner.html

This might help:

http://www.designerandroid.com/?p=28

edited May 28 '11 at 01:50

answered May 28 '11 at 01:31

JoxTraex

13,423
6
32
45

1

Well, the reason I think it's in a style somewhere is because when I change from the Holo to the Holo.Light theme, the text color on the spinners change from white to black. – Christopher Perry May 28 '11 at 01:36
Well you could define your own style and then apply it to the spinner, right? – JoxTraex May 28 '11 at 01:38
1

I could, but I have no clue what attribute to override for the text color, hence my question. – Christopher Perry May 28 '11 at 01:49

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 20 '16 at 17:03

this worked for me create your own layout file with a custom definition for the spinner item.

custom_spinner.xml:
<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="@android:id/txt_spinner"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:textSize="16sp"
android:textColor="#ffffff" />

Change the spinner item using adapter

Spinner spinner= (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.spinner1);
ArrayAdapter adapter = ArrayAdapter.createFromResource(this,R.array.by_loc_array,R.layout.txt_spinner);
spinner.setAdapter(adapter);

Android: Where is the Spinner widget's text color attribute hiding?

8 Answers8

Linked

Related