How to stop using AppCompat in Android Studio?

Question

I\'m new to Android development and I\'m trying to follow Android development guide in Android Studio, specifically trying to set up an action bar.

Answer 1

CommonsWare provided the correct steps but I still battled as there wasn't enough details for me to know exactly what to do (being new to Android Studio and Android development).

I found a blog post that explains the details here and it worked for me: https://mobiarch.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/removing-support-library-in-android-studio

Here is what it says (I have added some additional help):

Open build.gradle from your project. Locate the dependencies section.

dependencies {
    compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
    compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:22.0.0'
}

Remove the line for the compatibility library. After that the section should look like this.

dependencies {
    compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
}

Save and close.

By default the app uses a theme that is available from the support library. This is not available from the core API. So we need to fix that. Open res/values/styles.xml. The style tag will look something like this:

<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
    <!-- Customize your theme here. -->
</style>

Change the parent to a theme that is available from the core SDK. For example:

<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:style/Theme.Holo.Light">
    <!-- Customize your theme here. -->
</style>

Rename properties in the activity xml files such as app:showAsAction to android:showAsAction.

Extent your activity classes from Activity instead of ActionBarActivity and AppCompatActivity. You'll have to press Alt+Enter on Activity once you have made the changes to add import android.app.Activity at the top of the file. See the example below:

Change:

import android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivity;

public class DisplayMessageActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
    .
    .
    .
}

to:

import android.app.Activity;

public class DisplayMessageActivity extends Activity {
    .
    .
    .
}

And the same for any other activities that extends ActionBarActivity and AppCompatActivity

Finally, perform a Build | Clean Project and a Build | Rebuild Project to sort out the current build errors.

Answer 2

Step #1: Change your theme away from Theme.AppCompat

Step #2: Remove appcompat-v7 from your list of dependencies in your app module's build.gradle file

Step #3: Change all activities to not inherit from AppCompatActivity or ActionBarActivity, but instead inherit from something else, like Activity

Step #4: Change all menu resources, replacing app: with android:

Step #5: Do a clean rebuild (Build > Clean Project) and fix any lingering compilation errors triggered by the above four steps

Here is a sample project that uses the native action bar.