How do I change the android actionbar title and icon

Allan Ramírez picture Allan Ramírez · Jan 23, 2013 · Viewed 379.4k times · Source

I'm trying to do some things on the ActionBar in Android.

I've already added new items in the right side of the action bar.

How can I change the left side of the action bar? I want to change the icon and the text, and I want to add a "Back Button" in the action bar for the other screens

Android Action Bar

Answer

dymmeh picture dymmeh · Jan 23, 2013

This is very simple to accomplish

If you want to change it in code, call:

setTitle("My new title");
getActionBar().setIcon(R.drawable.my_icon);

And set the values to whatever you please.

Or, in the Android manifest XML file:

<activity android:name=".MyActivity" 
       android:icon="@drawable/my_icon" 
       android:label="My new title" />  

To enable the back button in your app use:

 getActionBar().setHomeButtonEnabled(true);
 getActionBar().setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);

The code should all be placed in your onCreate so that the label/icon changing is transparent to the user, but in reality it can be called anywhere during the activity's lifecycle.