Android Navigationview: Reduce Space Between Icon and Text and 'Itembackground' Not Working

Android NavigationView: reduce space between icon and text and `itemBackground` not working

After digging through the source. I found that you could override a dimension resource to fix this.

<dimen tools:override="true" name="design_navigation_icon_padding">16dp</dimen>

Beware though that this will change the dimension resource everywhere!
You may also be able to copy the layout file and override that instead design_navigation_menu.xml

As for the different color edges, I set app:itemBackground="@android:color/transparent" and then in the theme for the NavigationView set:

<item name="selectableItemBackground">@drawable/nav_drawer_item_selector</item>

You can handle both in the theme for your NavigationView as follows:

    <item name="selectableItemBackground">@drawable/nav_drawer_item_selector</item>
    <item name="itemBackground">@color/transparent</item>

nav_drawer_item_selector.xml looks like so:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:state_pressed="true" android:drawable="@color/white_alpha_10" />
    <item android:state_checked="true" android:drawable="@color/white_alpha_10" />
    <item android:state_focused="true" android:drawable="@color/white_alpha_10" />
    <item android:state_activated="true" android:drawable="@color/white_alpha_10" />
    <item android:drawable="@color/transparent" />
</selector>

excessive space between menu icon and text

I found the solution.
The image size needs to be bigger like 24x24.

Change Navigation Drawer Icon and Text Spacing

You will need another layout which you will inflate. In the layout, you can set the margin to what you want. Inflater allows you to adapt a layout to a view. check this out http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/LayoutInflater.html
or this
http://khajanpndey.blogspot.com.ng/2012/12/android-layoutinflater-tutorial.html

Whichever view you are using, checkout how you can inflate the view.
Hope this help.

Left margin between icons and NavigationView

The xml layout of that item is design_navigation_item.xml

<android.support.design.internal.NavigationMenuItemView
        xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="?attr/listPreferredItemHeightSmall"
        android:paddingLeft="?attr/listPreferredItemPaddingLeft"
        android:paddingRight="?attr/listPreferredItemPaddingRight"
        android:foreground="?attr/selectableItemBackground"
        android:focusable="true"/>

As you can see, paddings that are applied are taken from the activity's theme - listPreferredItemPaddingLeft and listPreferredItemPaddingRight. Thus, you have to apply your custom theme to NavigationView overriding those attributes with necessary values.

In styles.xml:

<style name="MyNavigationViewItemStyle" parent="AppTheme">
    <item name="listPreferredItemPaddingLeft">0dp</item>
    <item name="listPreferredItemPaddingRight">0dp</item>
</style>

We want to change only those two attributes from activity's theme, thus we are extending the theme, that is applied to the activity.

In layout xml:

<android.support.design.widget.NavigationView
    ...
    app:theme="@style/MyNavigationViewItemStyle"/>

Result

Android NavigationView with internal spacing

This line remove padding between icon and text.

only add below line in dimen.xml file

<dimen tools:override="true" name="design_navigation_icon_padding">10dp</dimen>

Checked state for icon is wrong in NavigationView after closing and opening drawer

Solution is to put the NavigationView directly into the DrawerLayout, not inside a Fragment.

NavigationView with different icon states

Update:
It looks like you can. See this answer.

NavigationView provides a convenient way to build a navigation drawer,
including the ability to creating menu items using a menu XML file.
We’ve expanded the functionality possible with the ability to set
custom views for items via app:actionLayout or using
MenuItemCompat.setActionView().

Old Answer:

After a quick look into the official documentation and the source code of this View it isn't actually possible to do this.

An alternative workaround, but this is very ugly, is to give each view a background Ressource which contains the right image. But please, don't do this!

If you want to do this use the "old" way to implement the DrawerLayout layout. Put a Fragment in that which is under your control and you can design it like you want.

---

Related Topics