TextInputLayout Styling

Today, with the material components, we have at least 3 out of box implementations of input layout: Default, FilledBox, and OutlinedBox. And we want to briefly walk through their styling:

If you are looking for a brief solution you can use this table. Below you can find the description of each of these parameters in detail.

Hint color

Hint color could be set via “android:textColorHint” parameter of TextInputLayout. This parameter also changes the label default color (label focused color could also be changed in other ways). Let’s set a purple color (#673AB7) as an example.

Label, Helper and Error

Such parameters as “app:hintTextAppearance”, “app:helperTextTextAppearance” and “app:errorTextAppearance” together with all the necessary text parameters of styles.xml should be used to customize labels, helpers and errors in TextInputLayout. The parent of the text appearance style should be TextAppearance.AppCompat or some of its children.

Also, please keep in mind the following:

• “app:hintTextAppearance” affects the focused label color and label size in any state;
• when an error is shown, the bottom/border line will have the color indicated in the “android:textColor” parameter of errorTextAppearance. This color will be changed to the default once the error is removed.

Here is the TextAppearances for error and helper that was used in the above shown TextInputLayouts:

Fonts

Fonts of all elements except inputted text (label, hint, error, and helper) could be easily changed in the program via the typeface parameter of TextInputLayout. We have done it in the following way:

text_input_layout.typeface = Typeface.createFromAsset(assets, “android_insomnia_regular.ttf”)

Spaces

Label’s, Helper’s and Error’s spaces are connected to the EditText in the TextInputLayout. So, to increase or decrease spaces between the error/helper messages and bottom line/border you should use “android:layout_marginBottom” parameter, between the label and the top of the text, or add some space on the start of the error, helper and the label, and you should set positive or negative padding to the EditText. But you should understand that this will affect the text inside the InputLayout so, it would be better if horizontal spaces were symmetric from both sides.

As an example, let’s increase space above the errors for Default and OutlinedBox input layouts and decrease for FilledBox input layout. Also, let’s add some extra space at the start of the input layouts.

Bottom line color

Bottom line color could be changed with “app:backgroundTint” attribute of EditText view. Pay attention to the prefix, “app:” that makes this parameter back-compatible and useful even for Android API 16.

As for the OutlinedBox, it does not have the bottom line but has an outline instead. To change its color we should use “app:boxStrokeColor” parameter, but this parameter changes stroke color in the focused state only. Changing the default state of the stroke is a bit tricky. We should override mtrl_textinput_default_box_stroke_color color. The line below should be added to the color.xml file:

<color name="mtrl_textinput_default_box_stroke_color" tools:override="true">#673AB7</color>

Let’s make the bottom line and the outline stroke color purple (#673AB7) as well.

Box background-color

This element is present in Filled and Outlined input layouts and can be changed via “app:boxBackgroundColor” parameter. Let’s change this parameter to the transparent purple (#26673AB7) only for FilledBox input layout.

Cursor and Selection

Finally, we get to the most interesting part — how to change the cursor and the selection handles. Most of you have already tried to use “app:textSelectHandle” parameters, that allow changing the drawable of the cursor handle and selection left and right handles. But how to change the color without drawing custom drawables and without changing the main application colors? It is not the secret that the cursor and handles color, as well as label color in focus mode, take their color from the AppTheme “colorAccent”. Of course, we can change it for the whole project but it is not obligatory. We can just use ThemeOverlay and change the “colorAccent” for a single view. We should inherit our style from ThemeOverlay.AppCompat and set it as the “android:theme” parameter of the view and that is all. As for the selection highlight, you can change it via android:textColorHighlight of the EditText.

In the example above was used android:color/holo_blue_light:

So, my final layout looked like this:

colors.xml includes the following colors:

styles.xml includes the following styles:

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About the Author
Dmytro is Android Developer at OmiSoft, whose inner perfectionist does not allow to be content with mediocre results but forces him to move forward to excellence.

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