Change the color of a checked menu item in a navigation drawer

Well you can achieve this using Color State Resource. If you notice inside your NavigationView you're using

app:itemIconTint="@color/black"app:itemTextColor="@color/primary_text"

Here instead of using @color/black or @color/primary_test, use a Color State List Resource. For that, first create a new xml (e.g drawer_item.xml) inside color directory (which should be inside res directory.) If you don't have a directory named color already, create one.

Now inside drawer_item.xml do something like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">    <item android:color="checked state color" android:state_checked="true" />    <item android:color="your default color" /></selector>

Final step would be to change your NavigationView

<android.support.design.widget.NavigationView    android:id="@+id/activity_main_navigationview"    android:layout_width="wrap_content"    android:layout_height="match_parent"    android:layout_gravity="start"    app:headerLayout="@layout/drawer_header"    app:itemIconTint="@color/drawer_item"  // notice here    app:itemTextColor="@color/drawer_item" // and here    app:itemBackground="@android:color/transparent"// and here for setting the background color to tranparent    app:menu="@menu/menu_drawer">

Like this you can use separate Color State List Resources for IconTint, ItemTextColor, ItemBackground.

Now when you set an item as checked (either in xml or programmatically), the particular item will have different color than the unchecked ones.

I believe app:itemBackground expects a drawable. So follow the steps below :

Make a drawable file highlight_color.xml with following contents :

<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:shape="rectangle">     <solid android:color="YOUR HIGHLIGHT COLOR"/></shape>

Make another drawable file nav_item_drawable.xml with following contents:

<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">        <item android:drawable="@drawable/highlight_color" android:state_checked="true"/></selector>

Finally add app:itemBackground tag in the NavView :

<android.support.design.widget.NavigationViewandroid:id="@+id/activity_main_navigationview"android:layout_width="wrap_content"android:layout_height="match_parent"android:layout_gravity="start"app:headerLayout="@layout/drawer_header"app:itemIconTint="@color/black"app:itemTextColor="@color/primary_text"app:itemBackground="@drawable/nav_item_drawable"app:menu="@menu/menu_drawer">

here the highlight_color.xml file defines a solid color drawable for the background. Later this color drawable is assigned to nav_item_drawable.xml selector.

This worked for me. Hopefully this will help.

********************************************** UPDATED **********************************************

Though the above mentioned answer gives you fine control over some properties, but the way I am about to describe feels more SOLID and is a bit COOLER.

So what you can do is, you can define a ThemeOverlay in the styles.xml for the NavigationView like this :

    <style name="ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.navTheme">        <!-- Color of text and icon when SELECTED -->        <item name="colorPrimary">@color/color_of_your_choice</item>         <!-- Background color when SELECTED -->        <item name="colorControlHighlight">@color/color_of_your_choice</item>     </style>

now apply this ThemeOverlay to app:theme attribute of NavigationView, like this:

<android.support.design.widget.NavigationViewandroid:id="@+id/activity_main_navigationview"android:layout_width="wrap_content"android:layout_height="match_parent"android:layout_gravity="start"app:theme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.navTheme"app:headerLayout="@layout/drawer_header"app:menu="@menu/menu_drawer">

I hope this will help.

One need to set NavigateItem checked true whenever item in NavigateView is clicked

//listen for navigation eventsNavigationView navigationView = (NavigationView)findViewById(R.id.navigation);navigationView.setNavigationItemSelectedListener(this);// select the correct nav menu itemnavigationView.getMenu().findItem(mNavItemId).setChecked(true);

Add NavigationItemSelectedListener on NavigationView

  @Override  public boolean onNavigationItemSelected(final MenuItem menuItem) {    // update highlighted item in the navigation menu    menuItem.setChecked(true);    mNavItemId = menuItem.getItemId();    // allow some time after closing the drawer before performing real navigation    // so the user can see what is happening    mDrawerLayout.closeDrawer(GravityCompat.START);    mDrawerActionHandler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {      @Override      public void run() {        navigate(menuItem.getItemId());      }    }, DRAWER_CLOSE_DELAY_MS);    return true;  }