Using attributes from API level beyond minSdkVersion

android xml api manifest
Michael Garner picture Michael Garner · Oct 14, 2014 · Viewed 11.3k times · Source

I am new to Android development and am wondering what happens if you use attributes on XML tags from an API level greater than your minSdkVersion.

For example having:

<uses-sdk
    android:minSdkVersion="9"
    android:targetSdkVersion="20" />

And then using this:

<activity android:logo="@drawable/iconwhatever"></activity>

The "android:logo" attribute is from API level 11.

In Android Studio it gives the following error, but I want to know what could happen if this is left alone:

Attribute "logo" is only used in API level 11 and higher. (Current min is 9)

Any help regarding this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer

ovmjm picture ovmjm · Nov 24, 2014

Unsupported attributes are safely ignored.

From SDK documentation:

When parsing XML resources, Android ignores XML attributes that aren’t supported by the current device. So you can safely use XML attributes that are only supported by newer versions without worrying about older versions breaking when they encounter that code.

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