What is the difference between colorPrimary and colorPrimaryDark in themes : <p>I'm trying to understand how the theme works in android. I don't know why colorPrimaryDark won't work with me or maybe i'm doing it wrong.</p>

<p>I tried this set and my action bar turns red because of colorPrimary:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;style name="MenuTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar"&gt;
  &lt;item name="colorPrimary"&gt;#FF0000&lt;/item&gt;
  &lt;item name="colorPrimaryDark"&gt;#0000FF&lt;/item&gt;
  &lt;item name="colorAccent"&gt;#00FF00&lt;/item&gt;    
  &lt;item name="actionMenuTextColor"&gt;#0000FF&lt;/item&gt;
&lt;/style&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>I tried to remove the colorPrimary and it turns black (which I thought it will use blue because of colorPrimaryDark:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;style name="MenuTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar"&gt;
  &lt;item name="colorPrimaryDark"&gt;#0000FF&lt;/item&gt;
  &lt;item name="colorAccent"&gt;#00FF00&lt;/item&gt;    
  &lt;item name="actionMenuTextColor"&gt;#0000FF&lt;/item&gt;
&lt;/style&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>I tried to remove the colorPrimaryDark and left the colorPrimary and it turns red again:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;style name="MenuTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar"&gt;
  &lt;item name="colorPrimary"&gt;#FF0000&lt;/item&gt;
  &lt;item name="actionMenuTextColor"&gt;#0000FF&lt;/item&gt;
&lt;/style&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>I don't know if i'm using it in wrong way or it's not really changing at all. Can anyone tell me the difference among them?</p>

<p>I also tried actionMenuTextColor to change the text color in actionBar but nothing happened. I found out the solution using <strong>parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar"</strong> instead of <strong>parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light"</strong> alone. But of course it will only turn into white. I'm still trying to make it in different color if there is any way.</p>
