How to change the text and icon color of selected menu item on Navigation Drawer programmatically using java

First check for the NavigationView below

<android.support.design.widget.NavigationView
        android:id="@+id/nav_view"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:layout_gravity="start"
        android:fitsSystemWindows="true"
        android:background="@color/white"
        app:itemIconTint="@drawable/drawer_item_color"
        app:itemTextColor="@drawable/drawer_item_color"
        app:headerLayout="@layout/nav_header_main"
        app:menu="@menu/activity_main_drawer" />

Check here two things

app:itemIconTint="@drawable/drawer_item_color"
app:itemTextColor="@drawable/drawer_item_color"

These both tags are using drawer_item_color.xml which is a selector in drawable folder and below is the code for it

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:color="@color/pink" android:state_checked="true" />
    <item android:color="@color/black" />
</selector>

use selector and add colors you want. This will do the job for you.


First Way

try using:

app:itemIconTint="@color/color_pink"  //selected icon color
app:itemTextColor="@color/color_pink" //selected text color
app:itemBackground="@color/color_gray" 

For your NavigationView

<android.support.design.widget.NavigationView
android:id="@+id/navigation_drawer"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:layout_gravity="start"
app:headerLayout="@layout/header_layout"
app:itemIconTint="@color/color_pink"  
app:itemTextColor="@color/color_pink" 
app:itemBackground="@color/color_gray"
app:menu="@menu/menu_drawer" />

Second Way

For programetically change use:

navigationView.setItemTextColor(ColorStateList1);
navigationView.setItemIconTintList(ColorStateList2);

Define ColorStateList1 and ColorStateList2 as:

For Navigation View Item Text Color

int[][] state = new int[][] {
        new int[] {-android.R.attr.state_enabled}, // disabled
        new int[] {android.R.attr.state_enabled}, // enabled
        new int[] {-android.R.attr.state_checked}, // unchecked
        new int[] { android.R.attr.state_pressed}  // pressed

};

int[] color = new int[] {
        Color.WHITE,
        Color.BLUE,
        Color.WHITE,
        Color.WHITE
};

ColorStateList ColorStateList1 = new ColorStateList(state, color);

For Navigation View Item Icon Color

int[][] states = new int[][] {
        new int[] {-android.R.attr.state_enabled}, // disabled
        new int[] {android.R.attr.state_enabled}, // enabled
        new int[] {-android.R.attr.state_checked}, // unchecked
        new int[] { android.R.attr.state_pressed}  // pressed

};

int[] colors = new int[] {
        Color.WHITE,
        Color.BLUE,
        Color.WHITE,
        Color.WHITE
};

ColorStateList ColorStateList2 = new ColorStateList(states, colors);

Firstly thank you all for responding back with your solutions :) Learning from the answers above and doing some research on ColorStateList I finally managed to create a method which sets the color of the checked item on the navigation drawer to match the color of my app theme color which is generated randomly at runtime.

Here's the method:

public void setNavMenuItemThemeColors(int color){
    //Setting default colors for menu item Text and Icon
    int navDefaultTextColor = Color.parseColor("#202020");
    int navDefaultIconColor = Color.parseColor("#737373");

    //Defining ColorStateList for menu item Text
    ColorStateList navMenuTextList = new ColorStateList(
            new int[][]{
                    new int[]{android.R.attr.state_checked},
                    new int[]{android.R.attr.state_enabled},
                    new int[]{android.R.attr.state_pressed},
                    new int[]{android.R.attr.state_focused},
                    new int[]{android.R.attr.state_pressed}
            },
            new int[] {
                    color,
                    navDefaultTextColor,
                    navDefaultTextColor,
                    navDefaultTextColor,
                    navDefaultTextColor
            }
    );

    //Defining ColorStateList for menu item Icon
    ColorStateList navMenuIconList = new ColorStateList(
            new int[][]{
                    new int[]{android.R.attr.state_checked},
                    new int[]{android.R.attr.state_enabled},
                    new int[]{android.R.attr.state_pressed},
                    new int[]{android.R.attr.state_focused},
                    new int[]{android.R.attr.state_pressed}
            },
            new int[] {
                    color,
                    navDefaultIconColor,
                    navDefaultIconColor,
                    navDefaultIconColor,
                    navDefaultIconColor
            }
    );

    mNavView.setItemTextColor(navMenuTextList);
    mNavView.setItemIconTintList(navMenuIconList);
}

you can call this method with any int color you want :)