---
title: "Theme vs Style"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/theme-vs-style-acevsu2rn
source_url: https://chrisbanes.me/posts/theme-vs-style
type: article
source: "Chris Banes"
published: 2026-07-05T07:13:49.095Z
updated: 2026-07-05T07:17:52.317Z
tags: ["android"]
reading_time: 4
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# Theme vs Style

**[Chris Banes](https://daily.dev/sources/chrisbanes)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Android 5.0 Lollipop introduced the ability to specify theme overrides directly on individual Views using android:theme. This post explains the difference between themes (global styling) and styles (view-level styling), how ContextThemeWrapper underlies theme overlays, and how ThemeOverlay.Material variants work. Practical examples show how to apply a dark theme to a Toolbar and how to use a custom ThemeOverlay to set theme attributes like colorEdgeEffect on a single view. AppCompat backports android:theme support for Toolbar on older API levels.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://chrisbanes.me/posts/theme-vs-style>

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---

Tags: [#android](https://daily.dev/tags/android)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/theme-vs-style-acevsu2rn)