Android N notification title and icon color is darker

Question

When showing a notification in android N and O it shows like this

You can change the top color of the icon and the app name by using setColor method of the NotificationCompat.Builder , The problem is that the displayed color doesn't match the provided one as it gets darker in the notification.

I tested it on Google Pixel(Oreo). Is this documented somewhere? Any workarounds?

Answer 1

Google decided to restrict acceptable colors in Notification when using setColor . Yes, it's undocumented, unsolicited and evil ! After some digging (hacker's way) it may be found in the source code of (internal) NotificationColorUtil . Inspect line 300 ( findContrastColor ) and 474 ( resolveContrastColor ) where the rationale is:

Resolves a Notification's color such that it has enough contrast to be used as the color for the Notification's action and header text.

I do not agree. Google should have known better and be doing no evil to the freedom of aesthetic choices of designers and developers .