Is there an official API for centered title on Toolbar like on popular Android apps, in the new material design?

Question

Background

In the past, Google always shown the toolbar to have the title aligned to the left:

https://material.io/develop/android/components/app-bar-layout/

However, recently, it seems that on some of its apps, the title is centered, even if it doesn't have symmetric content on the left and right. Example is on "Messages" app:

And on "Google News" app :

It also got updated on the material guidelines, here. Example:

Some people like to call it "material design 2.0", as it got various things updated.

The problem

While there are plenty of similar questions on StackOverflow from the time it was called "ActionBar" (example here ), here it's different, because it should have the support library (AKA "Android-X") have a way to handle it correctly, because things have changed, and now Google should support it as it's a part of the guidelines and part of various Android apps.

What I've tried

I tried to add a view within the toolbar, but even by coloring the view, you can see that it's not really centered, automatically, and that's before adding more action-items or up-button :

activity_main.xml

<androidx.coordinatorlayout.widget.CoordinatorLayout
        xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
        xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
        xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        tools:context=".MainActivity">

    <com.google.android.material.appbar.AppBarLayout
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:theme="@style/AppTheme.AppBarOverlay">

        <androidx.appcompat.widget.Toolbar
                android:id="@+id/toolbar"
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
                android:layout_height="?attr/actionBarSize"
                android:background="?attr/colorPrimary"
                app:popupTheme="@style/AppTheme.PopupOverlay">

            <TextView android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:text="title"
                      android:gravity="center" android:background="#33ff0000"
                      android:id="@+id/titleTextView"/>
        </androidx.appcompat.widget.Toolbar>

    </com.google.android.material.appbar.AppBarLayout>

</androidx.coordinatorlayout.widget.CoordinatorLayout>

This solution is similar to many others presented on other StackOverflow threads similar to this question, and just like there, it fails to really center the text, while on Google's attempt, it gets centered correctly, no matter the number of action items and other views around.

There is also a nicer workaround that I've come up with: have one toolbar on each side, and make the TextView have margin that is the max of both. There is even a library for this, "Toolbar-Center-Title"... But again, this is a workaround. Not what I'm asking about.

The question

Is there now an official way to have a centered title on the Toolbar, no matter how many action items there are, and no matter what's on the other side (up button, for example) ?

If so, how can this be done?

NOTE: Again, I'm not interested in workarounds. There are plenty of workarounds and I can think of such by myself.

Answer 1

TL;DR: No, there's currently no official way to center the title on a toolbar.

---

I don't think there is an official way to do it, at least not yet. But I know that the Flutter framework supports it and it's pretty straight forward: you simply need to pass centerTitle: true to the appbar constructor, as described in this answer. And there's a good chance that the apps you've mentioned in your question were built with Flutter, since both are from Google.

I think the closest workaround to your expected layout is having the TextView on top of the Toolbar, as shown here:

<android.support.design.widget.AppBarLayout
    android:id="@+id/appbar_layout"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content">
    <RelativeLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content">

        <android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
            android:id="@+id/toolbar"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:theme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.ActionBar">
        </android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar>

        <TextView
            android:layout_centerInParent="true"
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="@string/app_name"/>

    </RelativeLayout>
</android.support.design.widget.AppBarLayout>

But it would be really nice if the official Android API could support this the same way flutter does. Maybe you'd like to send a feature request to the Material Components Android Issue Tracker?

Answer 2

How about textAlignment="center"? a RelativeLayout does the trick, when AppCompatTextView has set layout_width="match_parent"; for example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">

    <androidx.appcompat.widget.LinearLayoutCompat
        android:id="@+id/customView"
        android:minHeight="?android:attr/actionBarSize"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:orientation="vertical"
        android:gravity="top">

        <RelativeLayout
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="match_parent">

            <!-- Home Button -->
            <include
                layout="@layout/button_home_menu"
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:layout_gravity="start"/>

            <androidx.appcompat.widget.LinearLayoutCompat
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:orientation="vertical"
                android:padding="8dp">

                <androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatTextView
                    android:id="@+id/title"
                    android:layout_width="match_parent"
                    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                    android:text="@string/app_name"
                    android:textAlignment="center"
                    android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceLarge"
                    android:textSize="18sp"
                    android:textStyle="bold"/>

                <androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatTextView
                    android:id="@+id/subtitle"
                    android:layout_width="match_parent"
                    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                    android:text="@string/app_version"
                    android:textAlignment="center"
                    android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceMedium"
                    android:textSize="12sp"
                    android:textStyle="bold"/>

            </androidx.appcompat.widget.LinearLayoutCompat>

        </RelativeLayout>

    </androidx.appcompat.widget.LinearLayoutCompat>

</layout>

the down-side is, that when showing several menu-items as action buttons - or when displaying extraordinary long strings as title, the title may overlap them - but when only showing one or two action buttons in combination with a title that fits the visually available width, this works just fine - that's because menu config ifRoom would always apply, because there is room. else one could only measure, which side of the toolbar has the most wide items' container - and then adjust the width on the other side's items' container. scaling the font-size depending on the available room might also be an option, to make it fit dynamically.

Answer 3

No official way to do it but subclassing provides most coverage without crazy tricks.

https://gist.github.com/bmc08gt/40a151e93969f2633b9b92bca4b31e83