How to use selector to tint ImageView?

Question

I want to tint my tabhost\'s icons using XML, instead of doing it programmatically (I wasn\'t able to do that anyway)...

I found this thread on SO: Android imagevie

Answer 1

I implemented this using DrawableCompat from the Android support-v4 library.

With a regular ImageButton (which subclasses ImageView, so this info also applies to ImageViews), using a black icon from the material icons collection:

This is the utility method I created:

public static void tintButton(@NonNull ImageButton button) {
    ColorStateList colours = button.getResources()
            .getColorStateList(R.color.button_colour);
    Drawable d = DrawableCompat.wrap(button.getDrawable());
    DrawableCompat.setTintList(d, colours);
    button.setImageDrawable(d);
}

Where res/color/button_colour.xml is a selector that changes the icon colour from red to semi-transparent red when the button is pressed:

After the ImageButton has been inflated in my activity's onCreate() method, I just call the tintButton(...) helper method once for each button.

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I have tested this on Android 4.1 (my minSdkVersion) and 5.0 devices, but DrawableCompat should work back to Android 1.6.