Understanding the Selected Tab's Color in Bottom Navigation View

The Bottom Navigation View is a common user interface component used in Android applications to facilitate easy navigation among different sections of an app. An essential feature of this component is the ability to visually indicate the current active or "selected" tab, usually by altering its color. This guide delves into how to implement and customize the color of the selected tab in the Bottom Navigation View.

Basics of Bottom Navigation View

The Bottom Navigation View typically contains three to five primary destination tabs, each represented by an icon and, optionally, a label. The Android system guidelines emphasize the importance of indicating the selected tab to the user through visual differentiation.

Customizing the Selected Tab's Color

Default Behavior

By default, the selected tab's color in the Bottom Navigation View will typically use a default color defined in the theme resources. If the app uses a Material Design theme, the active tab is often highlighted with the primary color of the theme.

Customizing Colors

To customize the color of the active tab, developers have several approaches:

1. Via XML Attributes: The color of the selected tab can be altered by defining itemIconTint and itemTextColor attributes in the XML layout file for the Bottom Navigation View. For settings only the selected state, we use a color state list.

• Consistency: Ensure that the selected tab color is consistent with the overall theme of your application.
• Contrast: Select colors with good contrast between the selected and unselected states to enhance readability and ensure accessibility.
• User Feedback: Use animations or transitions when changing tab states to provide fluid user feedback.
• Theme Conflicts: Ensure that the customizations don't conflict with other theming elements in your application.
• State Considerations: Be aware that using Color State Lists requires careful consideration of different states, such as enabled/disabled or focused.