Question

I am trying to use the following code to center the text in the ActionBar, but it aligns itself to the left.

How do you make it appear in the center?

ActionBar actionBar = getActionBar();
actionBar.setDisplayShowTitleEnabled(true);
actionBar.setTitle("Canteen Home");
actionBar.setHomeButtonEnabled(true);
actionBar.setIcon(R.drawable.back);

Answer 1

To have a centered title in ABS (if you want to have this in the default ActionBar, just remove the "support" in the method names), you could just do this:

In your Activity, in your onCreate() method:

getSupportActionBar().setDisplayOptions(ActionBar.DISPLAY_SHOW_CUSTOM); 
getSupportActionBar().setCustomView(R.layout.abs_layout);

abs_layout:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_gravity="center"
    android:orientation="vertical">

    <androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatTextView
        android:id="@+id/tvTitle"
        style="@style/TextAppearance.AppCompat.Widget.ActionBar.Title"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:gravity="center"
        android:textColor="#FFFFFF" />

</LinearLayout>

Now you should have an Actionbar with just a title. If you want to set a custom background, set it in the Layout above (but then don’t forget to set android:layout_height="match_parent").

or with:

getSupportActionBar().setBackgroundDrawable(getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.yourimage));