Switching application-wide theme programmatically?

android themes android-theme
Cheezmeister picture Cheezmeister · Jan 12, 2011 · Viewed 33.2k times · Source

I'm attempting to get a user-chosen theme and feel like I'm frustratingly close. Defining the theme in AndroidManifest.xml works as it should, but (as best I can tell) can't change based on app preferences:

<application 
    android:theme="@style/theme_sunshine" 
    android:icon="@drawable/icon" 
    android:label="@string/app_name">

Alternatively, setting it dynamically in each activity also works:

someChosenTheme = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this).getString("themePreference", "theme_twilight");
setTheme(someOtherChosenTheme);

But that seems messy, and I'd rather set the theme for the entire app in one place. My first thought was to grab the application context as soon as my main activity launches and do it there:

getApplicationContext().setTheme(R.style.theme_dummy);

As best I can tell, this ought to do the trick, but in fact it's not doing anything - the entire app has the default Android style. Is the above valid, and if so, might I be doing something else dumb?

I'm working in API level 3 if that matters. Prods in the right direction greatly appreciated!

Related question.

Answer

peter3 picture peter3 · Jan 12, 2011

Create a base activity for your app and override onCreate to set the theme. Derive all your other activities from this base activity.

Also check this tutorial:

http://www.androidengineer.com/2010/06/using-themes-in-android-applications.html

Related questions

How to change theme for AlertDialog

I was wondering if someone could help me out. I am trying to create a custom AlertDialog. In order to do this, I added the following line of code in styles.xml <resources> <style name="CustomAlertDialog" parent="…

Read More
Android - Back button in the title bar

In many apps (Calendar, Drive, Play Store) when you tap a button and enter a new activity, the icon in the title bar turns into a back button, but for the app I am making, it doesn't do that. How …

Read More
How to change current Theme at runtime in Android

I've created a PreferenceActivity that allows the user to choose the theme he wants to apply to the entire application. When the user selects a theme, this code is executed: if (...) { getApplication().setTheme(R.style.BlackTheme); } else { getApplication().setTheme(R.…

Read More