With KitKat on the Nexus 5, the default Google Experience Launcher displays aesthetically appealing translucent status and navigation bars. This was a long-awaited feature, which was already available in several custom ROMs ever since Froyo or even earlier. Obviously, however, time runs slower for official Android. But after all these years, the launcher finally looks like it should have from the beginning.
Translucent bars look great, but Google didn’t entirely avoid errors when implementing it. One example is when using ActionBar, the car color doesn’t extend behind the status bar itself. Luckily there is an easy fix, and it comes from XDA Forum Member Takhion.
Extended ActionBar is a simple activity that fixes all these little annoyances with your translucent bars. The developer hopes to transform it into a proper library at some point, but even this hacky workaround functions as it should. The result of adding this activity to your app or theme can be seen easily, and the best examples of this can be seen in the thread.
If you are an app developer or themer and ever wondered how to make your work more beautiful, you should definitely visit the original thread and implement this activity into your project.