What is the difference between Theme.AppCompat and Theme.Material in Android?

Question

In My case, what is difference in here:

<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Material.Light.DarkActionBar">

and

<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">

Answer 1

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

This is the raw Material design theme, designed for Android 5+

<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.*">

This is a way to use material design on pre-lollipop devices(thus app compatibility). You can design for newer API's using AppCompat and as such have it work on earlier API levels than what the starting API level is.

In this case, it means you can run Material Design on platforms that doesn't come with material design(meaning pre-Android 5)

Answer 2

<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">    
<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Material.Light.DarkActionBar">

Theme.Appcompact is for above API 7+

Theme.Material is for above API 21+