Android RatingBar change star colors

The easiest way that worked for me...if you are extending AppCompat Activity

In your build.gradle add latest appcompat library.

dependencies {  
    compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:X.X.X' // where X.X.X version
}

Make your activity extend android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {  
    ...
}

Declare custom style in your styles.xml file.

<style name="RatingBar" parent="Theme.AppCompat">  
    <item name="colorControlNormal">@color/indigo</item>
    <item name="colorControlActivated">@color/pink</item>
</style>  

Apply this style to your RatingBar via android:theme attribute.

<RatingBar  
    android:theme="@style/RatingBar"
    android:rating="3"
    android:stepSize="0.5"
    android:numStars="5"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>

It's a little complicated at the mentioned blog, I've used a similar but simplier way. You do need 3 star images (red_star_full.png, red_star_half.png and red_star_empty.png) and one xml, that's all.

Put these 3 images at res/drawable.

Put there the following ratingbar_red.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:id="@android:id/background" android:drawable="@drawable/red_star_empty" />
    <item android:id="@android:id/secondaryProgress" android:drawable="@drawable/red_star_half" />
    <item android:id="@android:id/progress" android:drawable="@drawable/red_star_full" />
</layer-list>

and, finally, tell your ratingbar definition to use this, i.e.

<RatingBar android:progressDrawable="@drawable/ratingbar_red"/>

That's it.

From the API 21 on it's very easy to change the color of the stars with this three lines of code:

android:progressTint="@android:color/holo_red_dark"
android:progressBackgroundTint="@android:color/holo_red_dark"
android:secondaryProgressTint="@android:color/holo_red_dark" 

Doing it like this, you'll change:

• the filled stars color (progressTint)
• the unfilled stars color (progressBackgroundTint)
• and the border color (secondaryProgressTint) of the stars

Try this, if you only want to change color:

RatingBar ratingBar = (RatingBar) findViewById(R.id.ratingBar);
LayerDrawable stars = (LayerDrawable) ratingBar.getProgressDrawable();
stars.getDrawable(2).setColorFilter(Color.YELLOW, PorterDuff.Mode.SRC_ATOP);