How to set the holo dark theme in a Android app?

Question

How can I set the dark holo theme in my app? At this time I got this:

<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Light" />

But when I change it to:

<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Dark" />

I get an error error: Error retrieving parent for item: No resource found that matches the given name 'android:Theme.Holo.Dark'.

How to solve the problem?

Answer 1

change parent="android:Theme.Holo.Dark" to parent="android:Theme.Holo"

The holo dark theme is called Holo

Answer 2

By default android will set Holo to the Dark theme. There is no theme called Holo.Dark, there's only Holo.Light, that's why you are getting the resource not found error.

So just set it to:

<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo" />

Answer 3

According the android.com, you only need to set it in the AndroidManifest.xml file:

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html#ApplyATheme

Adding the theme attribute to your application element worked for me:

--AndroidManifest.xml--

...

<application ...

  android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Holo"/>
  ...

</application>

Answer 4

In your application android manifest file, under the application tag you can try several of these themes.

Replace

<application
    android:theme="@style/AppTheme" >

with different themes defined by the android system. They can be like:-

android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Black"
android:theme="@android:style/Theme.DeviceDefault"
android:theme="@android:style/Theme.DeviceDefault.Dialog"
android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Holo"
android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent"

Each of these themes will have a different effect on your application like the DeviceDefault.Dialog will make your application look like a dialog box. You should try more of these. You can have a look from the android sdk or simply use auto complete in Eclipse IDE to explore the various available options.

A correct way to define your own theme would be to edit the styles.xml file present in the resources folder of your application.