Elevation on Android Lollipop not working

After going through the docs again, I finally found the solution.

Just add card_view:cardUseCompatPadding="true" to your CardView and shadows will appear on Lollipop devices.

What happens is, the content area in a CardView take different sizes on pre-lollipop and lollipop devices. So in lollipop devices the shadow is actually covered by the card so its not visible. By adding this attribute the content area remains the same across all devices and the shadow becomes visible.

My xml code is like :

<android.support.v7.widget.CardView
    android:id="@+id/media_card_view"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="130dp"
    card_view:cardBackgroundColor="@android:color/white"
    card_view:cardElevation="2sp"
    card_view:cardUseCompatPadding="true"
    >
...
</android.support.v7.widget.CardView>

ADDING android:elevation shadow to an ImageView:

android:clipToPadding="false"
+
android:outlineProvider="bounds"
+
android:elevation="2dp"

For some reason if you set a solid color with a transparency, the elevation shadow does not show up.

In your example, I changed #7d0073ff to #0073ff and I got a shadow.

This is probably a bug, as in their documentation it gives a similar example using a translucent background color.