How to change size of title's text on Action Bar?

Question

There is an ActionBar on each Android 4.0 application, and it got a title. I need to make this size less. But I don't understand how I can do it, because ActionBar doesn't provide public methods for it. Remark: I don't want to use custom views.

Solution 1

Actually, you can do what you want to customize the ActionBar. It must be done through the Theme. You can do something like this :

<style name="Theme.YourTheme" parent="android:style/Theme">
    <item name="android:actionBarStyle">@style/Theme.YourTheme.Styled.ActionBar</item>
</style>

<style name="Theme.YourTheme.Styled.ActionBar">
    <item name="android:titleTextStyle">@style/Theme.Viadeo.Styled.YourTheme.TitleTextStyle</item>
</style>

<style name="Theme.YourTheme.Styled.ActionBar.TitleTextStyle" parent="@android:style/Widget.TextView">
    <item name="android:textSize">12sp</item>
</style>

Solution 2

You could always do something like this:

ActionBar actionBar = getActionBar();
actionBar.setTitle(Html.fromHtml("<small>YOUR TITLE</small>"));

Solution 3

on my system, res/styles AppTheme has a note saying

<!-- All customizations that are NOT specific to a particular API-level can go here. -->

and this is the style indicated in AndroidMainfest.xml. I added

<item name="android:textSize">15sp</item>

and it worked and I'd rather do this than a custom actionbar.

Solution 4

I have followed this method to skip the creation of custom style:

1. Create a custom layout with required text size and
2. apply that to your action bar.

1) Create a layout file (titlebar.xml):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:orientation="vertical">

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:id="@+id/action_bar_title"
        android:text="@string/app_name"
        android:textColor="@color/colorPrimary"
        android:textSize="24sp" />
</LinearLayout>

Here set your required textSize.

2) MainActivity.java

    getSupportActionBar().setDisplayOptions(ActionBar.DISPLAY_SHOW_CUSTOM); //bellow setSupportActionBar(toolbar);
    getSupportActionBar().setCustomView(R.layout.titlebar);

hope this helps.

Solution 5

The text's size in Android ActionBar is standard.

Since ICS, Android now develops a standard so that applications will (hopefully) follow the same UI guidelines and design principles.

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/index.html

This is why you can't change it.

However, if you still want to do so, you could use a custom Theme or maybe implement ActionBar (a fork) and modify its sources: https://github.com/johannilsson/android-actionbar to get maximum control.

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Comments

[323go]

You could. But you shouldn't. Android's chrome is designed by UI professionals who study how a user interacts with a device, and optimize appearance and placement of all UI elements to facilitate good interaction. Modifying the chrome will make an app less usable and frustrate users.

[gingo]

Thanks Aurélien! You should consider using sp inshead of dp for text size ;-)

[Gábor]

Instead of hardcoding any size, you can consider inheriting from parent="@android:style/TextAppearance.Large" instead. That will give you the standard larger text size, no matter what device you're on.

[Elhanan Mishraky]

Worked for me, using Sherlock

[Milaaaad]

nice work i use this styling way for action bar and change the color and size and appearance of the title

[Hugo Mallet]

Use html to set text is very useless wit hbad performance use style :)

[Fer]

where is the solution?