Changing notification icon background on Lollipop

Question

I was going through the Notifications design pattern, and didn't find anything that talks about notification icon background. As you probably noticed, there is only a light grey background for custom notifications. But apps like Hangouts, or simply the USB Debugging notification has a custom color for their notification icon background.

Is there any possibility to change that grey into something else? (that specific circle's color programmatically)

Solution 1

1) Obtain Color

int color = 0xff123456;
int color = getResources().getColor(R.color.my_notif_color);
int color = ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.my_notif_color);

2) Set the Color to the Notification

NotificationCompat.Builder builder = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this);
...
builder.setColor(color);
Notification notif = builder.build();

The color is respected only on Lollipop and only affects background of the small icon. If a large icon is shown its contents are entirely your responsibility.

Source: NotificationCompat.Builder#setColor(int)

Solution 2

if you've defined color in colors.xml then in your NotificationBuilder add value as

.setColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.<YOUR_COLOR>))

That should solve your problem. It only affect to background of the icon.

Solution 3

getColor(int) has been deprecated on Resources

We should now use one of these alternatives:

• Resources's getColor(int, Theme)
• ContextCompat's getColor(Context context, int id)

Comments

[Ahmed Hegazy]

may be they have special icon with green background?

[Tobias Reich]

Not sure if it is still important to anyone but since Android 6.1 there is a new flag "NotificationCompat.Builder.setColorized(boolean colorize)" which allows changing the "gray background" of a notification.

[neteinstein]

According to this: stackoverflow.com/a/27023679/327011 the setColor will only change the color of the small icon. Beware.

[Eugen Pechanec]

1) This only works on LOLLIPOP. 2) This does not affect the image provided by you in setLargeBitmap. It only colors background of small icon.

[satyapol]

@AlexVPerl you can try my solution just below this comment

[Ahmed Jihad]

"setColor" is the correct answer IF YOU DO NOT SET A LARGE ICON. You will have the small icon display big with my_notif_color as background, no small badge added. tested on android 6.0

[HUSNAIN SARWAR]

I have a problem i set the icon have green colour but when notification appear it changes to white automatically..

[HUSNAIN SARWAR]

I have a problem i set the icon have green colour but when notification appear it changes to white automatically.

[HUSNAIN SARWAR]

I have a problem i set the icon have green colour but when notification appear it changes to white automatically.

[Eugen Pechanec]

@HUSNAINSARWAR Icon background is set by setColor. Icon foreground is always white. All of it is white, that's why you use a silhouette for a notification. Not your launcher icon.

[Eugen Pechanec]

If you're using a solid color the old method works just fine.

[Harsha]

still white square icon onlycoming in 6.0 but before 5.0 appicon fine

[Harsha]

can you share correct sample code with icons and sizes for me please am trying this but no use white square icon only coming

[Eugen Pechanec]

@Harsha blog.clevertap.com/…

[Ziem]

Any problems with Samsung devices? In my case setColor works on most devices except Samsung S7 with 7.0...

[Eugen Pechanec]

@Ziem Do you have a screenshot?

[Ziem]

@EugenPechanec imgur.com/lEmLRsY as you can see text is colored but icon is not. It works OK on all emulators and on my 5X but not on Samsung S7 (7.0). But I managed to solve my issue. It appears Samsung can't handle 144px icons with #fffffe color. I rescaled and recolored it and it started working.

[Eugen Pechanec]

@Ziem 144px is overkill. Notification icon should be 4x24dp on a xxxhdpi device. I believe it's the color. AOSP always rewrites all colors in the icon. Looks like Samsung retains color information if the drawable is not pure white. Good catch!

[Ziem]

@EugenPechanec it's inherited code and you are right 144px it's an overkill. Thankfully it works now ;). Thank you for your interest!

[Ahmad]

is it possible to change grayed out background color without customizing xml template for notification ?