Raw Color

ID

kotlin.android_raw_color

Severity

info

Remediation Complexity

medium

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

medium

Resource

Code Smell

Language

Kotlin

Tags

android, maintainability

Description

Flags Android XML attribute values that hard-code a hexadecimal color literal (#RRGGBB or #AARRGGBB) instead of referencing a color resource declared in res/values/colors.xml.

Rationale

Hard-coding colors in layouts prevents theme switching (light/dark mode), accessibility overrides, and global color refactors. Colors copied into every layout drift over time and are hard to keep consistent. Defining colors once as resources and referencing them via @color/…​ makes the palette discoverable, reusable, and theme-aware.

<!-- Bad: hard-coded color -->
<TextView android:textColor="#FF0000" android:text="Error" />

Attributes in the tools: namespace are skipped because they are design-time only and do not ship with the APK.

Remediation

Declare the color in res/values/colors.xml and reference it by name.

<!-- res/values/colors.xml -->
<resources>
  <color name="error_text">#FF0000</color>
</resources>

<!-- Good: color resource reference -->
<TextView android:textColor="@color/error_text" android:text="Error" />

References