Skinning & Customization

Introduction

If you want to customize Helpshift SDK theme as per your app's theme, see Theming and Skinning

If you want to change strings used in the SDK's UI or want to translate them as per device language, see String Customization.

Theming and Skinning

Helpshift Android SDK comes with following themes -

• Helpshift.Theme.Light.DarkActionBar (default)
• Helpshift.Theme.Light
• Helpshift.Theme.Dark
• Helpshift.Theme.HighContrast
• Helpshift.Theme.DayNight.DarkActionBar
• Helpshift.Theme.DayNight.Light
• Helpshift.Theme.DayNight.HighContrast

Helpshift.Theme.Dark	Helpshift.Theme.HighContrast	Helpshift.Theme.Light	Helpshift.Theme.Light.DarkActionbar

To make the Helpshift SDK look like your app, please follow the steps given below -

1. Define your custom helpshift theme in your styles.xml and inherit it from one of the Helpshift themes mentioned above.
2. Create a style named Helpshift.Theme.Base and set its parent to your custom helpshift theme.

For example:

You can give the Material look and feel of your app to Helpshift SDK by customizing very few attributes as follows:

<style name="MyCustomHelpshiftTheme" parent="Helpshift.Theme.Light.DarkActionBar">
    <item name="colorAccent">@color/your_custom_color</item>
    <item name="colorPrimary">@color/your_custom_color</item>
    <item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/your_custom_color</item>
</style>

<style name="Helpshift.Theme.Base" parent="MyCustomHelpshiftTheme"/>

You can customize Android's styleable attributes along with Helpshift's styleable attributes.

Helpshift styleable attributes

Styleable attributes in action

The following illustrates use of these styleable attributes over Helpshift SDK's UI:

Helpshift dimensions

You can use the following dimension to change certain aspect of the SDK. These dimensions are independent of the theme set for the SDK.

For example:

<dimen name="DIMENSION_NAME">VALUE</dimen>

Changing theme at runtime

From SDK version 7.6.3 onwards, SDK provides the ability to set a theme for all Helpshift SDK screens at runtime. This theme needs to inherit one of the Helpshift themes. To set the theme, you need to pass a theme resource value as the parameter. For example:

Core.setTheme(R.style.custom_theme);

You can reset an existing theme to the default theme declared for the Helpshift activity by passing 0 as the theme resource id parameter. For example:

Core.setTheme(0);

Dark Mode support

From SDK version 7.6.3 onwards, SDK supports dark mode theming. To enable the dark mode switching feature, you need to create a theme by inheriting one of the Helpshift.Theme.DayNight themes in your app:

• Helpshift.Theme.DayNight.DarkActionBar
• Helpshift.Theme.DayNight.Light
• Helpshift.Theme.DayNight.HighContrast

Customizing the dark mode themes

You can customize the dark mode theme just like you would customize any other Helpshift theme like below:

<style name="MyCustomHelpshiftTheme" parent="Helpshift.Theme.DayNight.DarkActionBar">
    <item name="colorAccent">@color/your_custom_color</item>
    <item name="colorPrimary">@color/your_custom_color</item>
    <item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/your_custom_color</item>
</style>
<style name="Helpshift.Theme.Base" parent="MyCustomHelpshiftTheme"/>

Enable/disable dark mode switching at runtime

To enable or disable dark mode switching at runtime programatically, use the Android API referred here.

Orientation support

By default, the Android SDK will obey the orientation of the device. If the device rotates to landscape mode, the SDK will update its UI to landscape orientation. Rotating back to portrait mode will bring the UI back to portrait orientation.

Lock the Helpshift SDK window to landscape/portrait mode :

Use one of the following solutions to lock the Helpshift SDK window to landscape/portrait mode, irrespective of the app's orientation.

Using screenOrientation config (supported from v4.9.0) :

You can programmatically set the orientation for the Helpshift SDK using the screenOrientation install configuration, documented here. This config takes precedence over the orientation set in AndroidManifest.xml.

By specifying the orientation for Helpshift Activity in AndroidManifest.xml :

If you are using gradle :

Add the Helpshift activity to your app's AndroidManifest.xml file with the attribute android:screenOrientation="landscape" or android:screenOrientation="portrait" as given below.

<activity
    android:name="com.helpshift.support.activities.ParentActivity"
    android:theme="@style/Helpshift.Theme.Activity"
    android:screenOrientation="landscape" />

This will merge the screenOrientation attribute to the activity in Helpshift's AndroidManifest.xml file.

If you are using ant build / Eclipse based project:

Locate the AndroidManifest.xml file in Helpshift project and add attribute android:screenOrientation="landscape" or android:screenOrientation="portrait" to Helpshift's ParentActivity in AndroidManifest.xml file.