How does android:layout_weight work?

Question

When I have the following, it shows top layout with four colors has much smaller area than the bottom layout area.

According to this documentation, when you add more

Answer 1

Building on what Janusz said, if you use fill_parent, you can then set android:layout_weight to "split" the "full area" between multiple layout items.

The layout_weight doesn't increase the area, it increases it "right" to the area. but it's also relative to the parent. If you have a parent with a layout_height=fill_parent, with a layout_weight=0 and the parent has a sibling with the same, setting layout_weight=1 to one of the children does not affect the parent.

Both the parent, and the sibling, would take up 50% of the available area that they can fill.

Answer 2

In linear layout properties change the layout width to "fill_parent" instead of "wrap_content" hope it helps.