Styling a SearchView in Android Action Bar

I have been spending many time for this but finally: :-)

1. To change the text color :

((EditText)searchView.findViewById(android.support.v7.appcompat.R.id.search_src_text)).setTextColor(Color.WHITE);

or this one for AndroidX:

((EditText)searchView.findViewById(androidx.appcompat.R.id.search_src_text)).setTextColor(Color.WHITE);

2. To change the text hint:

((EditText)searchView.findViewById(android.support.v7.appcompat.R.id.search_src_text)).setHintTextColor(Color.WHITE);

or this one for AndroidX:

((EditText)searchView.findViewById(androidx.appcompat.R.id.search_src_text)).setHintTextColor(Color.WHITE);

If you're using appcompat library, then the solution is a bit different from Jerome's answer. Here's my solution

@Overridepublic boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu){    getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.main_menu, menu);    restoreActionBar();    SearchManager searchManager = (SearchManager) getSystemService(Context.SEARCH_SERVICE);    MenuItem searchMenuItem = menu.findItem(R.id.action_search);    SearchView searchView = (SearchView) MenuItemCompat.getActionView(searchMenuItem);    searchView.setSearchableInfo(searchManager.getSearchableInfo(getComponentName()));    SearchView.SearchAutoComplete searchAutoComplete = (SearchView.SearchAutoComplete)searchView.findViewById(android.support.v7.appcompat.R.id.search_src_text);    searchAutoComplete.setHintTextColor(Color.WHITE);    searchAutoComplete.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);    View searchplate = (View)searchView.findViewById(android.support.v7.appcompat.R.id.search_plate);    searchplate.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.texfield_searchview_holo_light);    ImageView searchCloseIcon = (ImageView)searchView.findViewById(android.support.v7.appcompat.R.id.search_close_btn);    searchCloseIcon.setImageResource(R.drawable.clear_search);    ImageView voiceIcon = (ImageView)searchView.findViewById(android.support.v7.appcompat.R.id.search_voice_btn);    voiceIcon.setImageResource(R.drawable.abc_ic_voice_search);    ImageView searchIcon = (ImageView)searchView.findViewById(android.support.v7.appcompat.R.id.search_mag_icon);    searchIcon.setImageResource(R.drawable.abc_ic_search);    return super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);}

You can change the style of the searchview. Here is some code I used to tweak the edittext, the voice icon...

SearchManager searchManager = (SearchManager) getSystemService(Context.SEARCH_SERVICE);        SearchView searchView = (SearchView) menu.findItem(R.id.menu_search).getActionView();        searchView.setSearchableInfo(searchManager.getSearchableInfo(getComponentName()));        int searchPlateId = searchView.getContext().getResources().getIdentifier("android:id/search_plate", null, null);        searchView.findViewById(searchPlateId).setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.textfield_search_selected);        int voiceSearchPlateId = searchView.getContext().getResources().getIdentifier("android:id/submit_area", null, null);        searchView.findViewById(voiceSearchPlateId).setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.textfield_search_right_selected);        // change hint color        int searchTextViewId = searchView.getContext().getResources().getIdentifier("android:id/search_src_text", null, null);        TextView searchTextView = (TextView) searchView.findViewById(searchTextViewId);        searchTextView.setHintTextColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.light_grey));

[edit] A more complete answer is available here : Changing the background drawable of the searchview widget