How to change default text color using custom theme?

Question

What I'm trying should be quite easy with themes, but I can't find out how to: I want all text to be white by default in my app. I created a custom theme in theme.xml:

<style name="Theme" parent="@android:Theme">
</style>

<style name="TextAppearance.Theme" parent="@android:TextAppearance.Theme">
    <item name="android:textColor">#ffffffff</item>
</style>

and set it for the whole application:

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

But labels are still black. What's missing?

PS: How can I additionally define styles for different text sizes, to be applied per widget? Is something like that correct?

<style name="Theme.smallText">
    <item name="android:textSize">12dp</item>
</style>

update

I took a look at themes.xml in Android SDK, it shows how to set the text style for a theme:

<item name="textAppearance">@android:style/TextAppearance</item>

In my case it should work with this definition:

<style name="Theme" parent="@android:Theme">
    <item name="android:textAppearance">@style/MyText</item>
</style>

<style name="MyText" parent="@android:style/TextAppearance">
    <item name="android:textColor">#ffffffff</item>
</style>

However, it is still not working.

Here's another post about this same issue.

Answer 1

In your Manifest you need to reference the name of the style that has the text color item inside it. Right now you are just referencing an empty style. So in your theme.xml do only this style:

<style name="Theme" parent="@android:style/TextAppearance">
    <item name="android:textColor">#ffffffff</item>
</style>

And keep you reference to in the Manifest the same (android:theme="@style/Theme")

EDIT:

theme.xml:

<style name="MyTheme" parent="@android:style/TextAppearance">
    <item name="android:textColor">#ffffffff</item>
    <item name="android:textSize">12dp</item>
</style>

Manifest:

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

Notice I combine the text color and size into the same style. Also, I changed the name of the theme to MyTheme and am now referencing that in the Manifest. And I changed to @android:style/TextAppearance for the parent value.