Change toolbar back arrow color

Question

Hi. In the picture above you can see a back arrow and a (part of) title. I changed the title color using the attached .xml code. But I want to color the back arrow

Answer 1

Be mindful of the theme you use. If you copied your ToolBar code from https://developer.android.com/training/appbar/setting-up, then you have this:

<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
   android:id="@+id/my_toolbar"
   android:layout_width="match_parent"
   android:layout_height="?attr/actionBarSize"
   android:background="?attr/colorPrimary"
   android:elevation="4dp"
   android:theme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.ActionBar"
   app:popupTheme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light"/>

Based on @Gabriele's answer (upvoted), I had to take out the android:theme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.ActionBar" attribute and put it in styles.xml then customize the colorControlNormal attribute like so:

<style name="ToolBarTheme"  parent="ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.ActionBar">
    <item name="colorControlNormal">@color/white</item>
</style>

Back to my Toolbar declaration, I modified as below:

<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
   ...
   android:theme="@style/ToolBarTheme"
   />

Cheers!

Answer 2

You can override the theme in your Toolbar.
With a Material Components theme:

  <com.google.android.material.appbar.MaterialToolbar
        style="@style/Widget.MaterialComponents.Toolbar.Primary"
        android:theme="@style/MyThemeOverlay_Toolbar"
        ..>

with:

  <style name="MyThemeOverlay_Toolbar2" parent="ThemeOverlay.MaterialComponents.Toolbar.Primary">

    <!-- This attributes is used by navigation icon and overflow icon -->
    <item name="colorOnPrimary">@color/secondaryColor</item>
  </style>

With an AppCompat theme:

<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
  android:theme="@style/myToolbarTheme" 
  ...
>

Then in your theme you can define the colorControlNormal attribute:

   <style name=""  parent="ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Dark.ActionBar">
      ....
      <item name="colorControlNormal">@color/myColor</item>  
   </style>

Answer 3

For me I'm using my own drawable back arraw.

first add this to your toolbar

  <androidx.appcompat.widget.Toolbar
    android:id="@+id/toolbar"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="?attr/actionBarSize"
    android:background="?attr/colorPrimary"
    app:titleTextColor="@color/White"
    app:title="Your Title"
    app:navigationIcon="@drawable/ic_back"
    app:popupTheme="@style/AppTheme.PopupOverlay"
    >
</androidx.appcompat.widget.Toolbar>

as you can see

app:navigationIcon="@drawable/ic_back"

is the key to change the arraw as you want, and here is how it looks like

<vector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:height="24dp"
android:width="24dp"
android:viewportWidth="24"
android:autoMirrored="true"
android:viewportHeight="24">
<path android:fillColor="#C87BB3" android:pathData="M20,11V13H8L13.5,18.5L12.08,19.92L4.16,12L12.08,4.08L13.5,5.5L8,11H20Z" />

it is a vector