Change Toolbar color in Appcompat 21

Question

I am testing out the new Appcompat 21 Material Design features. Therefore I've created a Toolbar like this:

<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
android:id="@+id/activity_my_toolbar"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:minHeight="?attr/actionBarSize"
android:background="?attr/colorPrimary"
app:theme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.ActionBar"/>

and included it in my main layout file.

Then I've set it as supportActionBar like that:

Toolbar toolBar = (Toolbar)findViewById(R.id.activity_my_toolbar);
setSupportActionBar(toolBar);

It's working, but somehow I can't quite figure out how to customize the toolbar. It's grey and the text on it is black. How should I change background and text color?

I've gone through this instructions:

http://android-developers.blogspot.de/2014/10/appcompat-v21-material-design-for-pre.html

What have I overseen to change colors?

 <style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light">
    <item name="android:windowActionBar" tools:ignore="NewApi">false</item>
    <item name="windowActionBar">false</item>
</style>

EDIT:

I was able to change the background color by adding these lines of code to the theme:

<item name="colorPrimary">@color/actionbar</item>
<item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/actionbar_dark</item>

But they won't affect the text color. What am I missing? Instead of the black text and black menu button, I'd rather prefer a white text and white menu buttons:

Answer 1

again this is all in the link you supplied

to change the text to white all you have to do is change the theme.

use this theme

<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
android:id="@+id/activity_my_toolbar"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:minHeight="?attr/actionBarSize"
android:background="?attr/colorPrimary"
app:theme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Dark.ActionBar"
    app:popupTheme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light"/>