Android change Material elevation shadow color

Question

is it possible to change the shadow color produced by the xml elevation property? I want the shadow be dynamically changed by code.

Solution 1

I know that this question is very old and probably the author doesn't need the answer anymore. I'll just leave it here so others can find it.

Lollipop's elevation system doesn't support colored shadows.

But, if you need colored shadows, it's possible to get them using Carbon. It's a kind-of support library for Material Design and in the most recent version there is an option to change shadow color. There's a ton of nice designs on Behance featuring colored shadows and I thought it would be nice to have them despite lack of such feature in Android. It's important to note that colored shadows are emulated on all Android versions, on 5.0+ too.

https://github.com/ZieIony/Carbon

The following image and code can be found in Carbon's samples.

Code:

<carbon.widget.LinearLayout
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:orientation="horizontal">

    <carbon.widget.Button
        android:layout_width="56dp"
        android:layout_height="56dp"
        android:layout_margin="@dimen/carbon_padding"
        android:background="#ffffff"
        app:carbon_cornerRadius="2dp"
        app:carbon_elevation="8dp"
        app:carbon_elevationShadowColor="@color/carbon_red_700"/>

</carbon.widget.LinearLayout>

"CardView":

<carbon.widget.LinearLayout
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:orientation="horizontal">

    <carbon.widget.LinearLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="160dp"
        android:layout_margin="@dimen/carbon_margin"
        android:background="#ffffff"
        app:carbon_cornerRadius="2dp"
        app:carbon_elevation="8dp"
        app:carbon_elevationShadowColor="@color/carbon_red_700">

        <carbon.widget.ImageView
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="0dp"
            android:layout_weight="1"
            android:src="@drawable/test_image"/>

        <carbon.widget.TextView
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="test text"/>
    </carbon.widget.LinearLayout>

</carbon.widget.LinearLayout>

Solution 2

Starting API 28 (Pie) View#setOutlineAmbientShadowColor(int color) and View#setOutlineSpotShadowColor(int color) are available in the View class.

If you use elevation on your View, you can use both methods to change the color of the shadow.

Solution 3

You can use Shadow Layout. Check my answer.

Comments

[Lars]

Would you maybe be able to elaborate exactly how you use Carbon to create coloured shadows? I am currently not able to make it work. Thanks in advance.

[Zielony]

I added a snippet. You can find the complete example in the repository. It's in the sample app, under 'features/shadow'. If you're experiencing any issues, feel free to open an issue and discuss that there.

[Lars]

Thank you a lot. The problem however is i want to use it on a CardView or similar, where i am able to have childviews inside. So a Button won't work in my case.

[ProjectDelta]

To add to that, these can also be set in you Theme xml as <item name="android:outlineAmbientShadowColor">@color/yourAmbientS‌​hadow</item> <item name="android:outlineSpotShadowColor">@color/yourSpotShadow<‌​/item>

[Tony]

@Zielony your repo is hard to integrate into my projects :(

[Zielony]

@Tony uh, sorry for that. Are you trying to copy required pieces of code? Or would you rather like to move from AppCompat to Carbon? You can always add an issue to my GitHub project to ask for help.

[Hamid Zandi]

app:carbon_elevationShadowColor="@color/carbon_red_700" not working! v0.11.0