Change Actionbar height on Android JellyBean

Question

I\'ve been recently developing an Android app, in which i need to have a custom layout and dimension for the tab bar. The way that i did it until now is by using Jake Wharto

Answer 1

it seems to me that it was done on purpose and I don't know why. There are some variables in bools.xml

true
false

The height of embed tabs is limited to 48dip in ActionBarPolicy.java, as you have already mentioned. That's why such behaviour can be seen only in Android JellyBean or higher. I can't find a better solution than to make some java reflection. So here is the code

private void hackJBPolicy() {
    View container = findScrollingTabContainer();
    if (container == null) return;

    try {
        int height = getResources().getDimensionPixelSize(R.dimen.action_bar_height);
        Method method = container.getClass()
                .getDeclaredMethod("setContentHeight", Integer.TYPE);
        method.invoke(container, height);
    } catch (NoSuchMethodException e) {
        Log.e(LOG_TAG, e.getLocalizedMessage(), e);
    } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
        Log.e(LOG_TAG, e.getLocalizedMessage(), e);
    } catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
        Log.e(LOG_TAG, e.getLocalizedMessage(), e);
    } catch (InvocationTargetException e) {
        Log.e(LOG_TAG, e.getLocalizedMessage(), e);
    }
}

private View findScrollingTabContainer() {
    View decor = getWindow().getDecorView();
    int containerId = getResources().getIdentifier("action_bar_container", "id", "android");

    // check if appcompat library is used
    if (containerId == 0) {
        containerId = R.id.action_bar_container;
    }

    FrameLayout container = (FrameLayout) decor.findViewById(containerId);

    for (int i = 0; i < container.getChildCount(); i++) {
        View scrolling = container.getChildAt(container.getChildCount() - 1);
        String simpleName = scrolling.getClass().getSimpleName(); 
        if (simpleName.equals("ScrollingTabContainerView")) return scrolling;
    }

    return null;
}

Use the method hackJBPolicy() in your onCreate. Notice that I used ActionBar from appcompat library. Here is the link to the sample project with the use of this workaround.

After all, it seems to me that it would be easier in future to create custom view aligned to the top of the screen instead of using ActionBar in tabs mode if your ui design is a bit far from guidlines.