You need to create a custom theme and set it to the Activity
or whole application in Manifest
Create a custom action bar tab style like this, and change the required attributes
<style name="MyActionBarTabView" parent="Widget.AppCompat.Base.ActionBar.TabView">
<item name="android:background">@drawable/action_bar_tab_background</item>
</style>
Create a custom theme like this, and change the actionBarTabStyle
attribute.
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.Base.AppCompat">
<item name="android:actionBarTabStyle">@style/MyActionBarTabView</item>
<item name="actionBarTabStyle">@style/MyActionBarTabView</item>
</style>