Navigation drawer item icon not showing original colour

How to Fix Navigation Drawer Item Icons Showing Incorrect Colors

So, you've built an awesome navigation drawer for your Android app, but there's one problem: the icons next to the items are not showing their original colors. Instead, they appear in a dull grey shade. 🙄

In this blog post, we'll explore the common issue of navigation drawer item icons not displaying their original colors and provide you with easy solutions to fix this problem. Let's dive in! 💪

Understanding the Issue

The issue occurs because by default, the navigation drawer applies a tint to the icons, causing them to lose their original colors. This tint is applied to ensure that icons have consistent colors across different themes and styles. However, in some cases, you may want to display the icons in their original colors for design or branding purposes.

Solution 1: Disabling Icon Tint

To prevent the navigation drawer from applying a tint to the icons, you can disable the icon tinting feature. This can be done by setting the itemIconTint attribute of the NavigationView to null. Here's how you can do it in your code:

NavigationView navigationView = findViewById(R.id.nav_view);
if (navigationView != null) {
    navigationView.setItemIconTintList(null);
    setupDrawerContent(navigationView);
}

By setting setItemIconTintList(null), you're effectively disabling the icon tinting, allowing the icons to retain their original colors. 🎨

Solution 2: Customizing Icon Colors

If you want more control over the colors of your navigation drawer icons, you can manually set the colors using drawable resources. First, create different versions of your icons with the desired colors. For example, you can have ic_browncircle.xml for the brown-colored icon and ic_bluecircle.xml for a blue-colored icon.

Next, update your drawer_view.xml file to use the custom icon resources:

<item
    android:id="@+id/navigation_item_1"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_browncircle"
    android:title="Sub item 1" />

By specifying the custom icon resource, you can ensure that the icon is displayed in the desired color. 🌈

Test and Verify

Once you've implemented the solution, rebuild and run your app to see the changes in action. The icons in your navigation drawer should now appear with their original colors, or with the custom colors you specified. If everything worked perfectly, congrats! 🎉

Conclusion

Fixing navigation drawer item icons not showing their original colors is just a matter of disabling the icon tinting or using custom icon resources. By following the solutions provided in this blog post, you can easily overcome this common issue and achieve the desired look for your navigation drawer icons.

If you found this guide helpful, don't forget to share it with your fellow developers! And if you have any other questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below. Happy coding! 😊