Android Material: Status bar color won't change

Question

I'm developing an simple app to test the material design. I'm using com.android.support:appcompat-v7:21.0.0 and my activity looks like:

public class MyActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
   ...
}

The layout is defined as:

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    tools:context=".MyActivity">

    <android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
        xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
        android:id="@+id/toolbar"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="128dp"
        android:minHeight="?attr/actionBarSize"
        android:background="?attr/colorPrimaryDark"/>
</LinearLayout>

Now i defined my theme following material guidelines:

<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.NoActionBar">
    <item name="colorPrimary">@color/colorPrimary500</item>
    <item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/colorPrimaryDark700</item>
</style>

I'd like to change the status bar color in pre Android 5 and set it to colorPrimaryDark but i can't find the way. I tried using:

getWindow().setStatusBarColor(..)

but setStatusBar color is available from level 21. Why if i define a colorPrimaryDark in my theme and use appcompact the status bar doesn't change color? Anyone can help?

Answer 1

The status bar is a system window owned by the operating system. On pre-5.0 Android devices, applications do not have permission to alter its color, so this is not something that the AppCompat library can support for older platform versions. The best AppCompat can do is provide support for coloring the ActionBar and other common UI widgets within the application.