How to set shape's opacity?

In general you just have to define a slightly transparent color when creating the shape.

You can achieve that by setting the colors alpha channel.

#FF000000 will get you a solid black whereas #00000000 will get you a 100% transparent black (well it isn't black anymore obviously).

The color scheme is like this #AARRGGBB there A stands for alpha channel, R stands for red, G for green and B for blue.

The same thing applies if you set the color in Java. There it will only look like 0xFF000000.

UPDATE

In your case you'd have to add a solid node. Like below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/shape_my">
    <stroke android:width="4dp" android:color="#636161" />
    <padding android:left="20dp"
        android:top="20dp"
        android:right="20dp"
        android:bottom="20dp" />
    <corners android:radius="24dp" />
    <solid android:color="#88000000" />
</shape>

The color here is a half transparent black.

use this code below as progress.xml:

<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">

    <item android:id="@android:id/background">
        <shape>
            <corners android:radius="5dip" />
            <gradient
                    android:startColor="#ff9d9e9d"
                    android:centerColor="#ff5a5d5a"
                    android:centerY="0.75"
                    android:endColor="#ff747674"
                    android:angle="270"
            />
        </shape>
    </item>

    <item android:id="@android:id/secondaryProgress">
        <clip>
            <shape>
                <solid android:color="#00000000" />
            </shape>
        </clip>
    </item>

    <item android:id="@android:id/progress">
        <clip>
            <shape>
                <solid android:color="#00000000" />
            </shape>
        </clip>
    </item>

</layer-list>

where:

• "progress" is current progress before the thumb and "secondaryProgress" is the progress after thumb.
• color="#00000000" is a perfect transparency
• NOTE: the file above is from default android res and is for 2.3.7, it is available on android sources at: frameworks/base/core/res/res/drawable/progress_horizontal.xml. For newer versions you must find the default drawable file for the seekbar corresponding to your android version.

after that use it in the layout containing the xml:

<SeekBar
    android:id="@+id/myseekbar"
    ...
    android:progressDrawable="@drawable/progress"
    />

you can also customize the thumb by using a custom icon seek_thumb.png:

android:thumb="@drawable/seek_thumb"