Hide title bar if it's not an ActionBar - predict ActionBar presence before setContentView?

Question

If my fullscreen preference (off by default) is on, I want my Activity to hide the title bar as well as the notification bar. I can do that with requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE); + FLAG_FULLSCREEN etc. or perhaps setTheme(android.R.style.Theme_NoTitleBar_Fullscreen);

Either of these must happen before setContentView() or they will crash. The hard part is:

• I target API levels 3 to 14, and I only want to hide the title bar if the Activity is not going to use an ActionBar. Otherwise, FEATURE_NO_TITLE will hide the ActionBar and lose some important controls. (I'll instead settle for "lights-out" mode.)
• I can't see how to find out whether an ActionBar will be used until after setContentView(), when it's too late.

Things that don't work:

• getActionBar() returns null at this early stage.
• getWindow.hasFeature(Window.FEATURE_ACTION_BAR) is false.
• Knowing (by reflection) that ActionBar exists as a class is insufficient, because, sticking with the default device theme, that might not always use ActionBar on some Ice Cream Sandwich devices, even though the platform has it. (?)
  • Alternatively: can I rely on ICS always having an ActionBar? Why?
  • Edit: ok, maybe ICS' title bar is still an ActionBar, just with no items and not even the overflow button? (In which case I still want to hide it.) Can anyone shed any light there?

Any ideas? :-)

Answer 1

I think what you want to use instead is ActionBarSherlock. It takes care of all the reflection and API level detection for you.

Answer 2

Would it be possible to do something like suggested here and here? Basically specify that on certain api levels, you hide the title bar (because you will have the action bar).