Normally the horizontal progress bar will display yellow color which most of you may not like. Unlike other views, changing the background for progress bar will not work. It will only change background image, but not the bar which shows the progress. There is one more property in xml, android:progressDrawable . You should change this. But the drawable must be a clip drawable . A clip drawable clips the diagram based on the value set. So let us create a file called clip.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <clip xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:drawable="@drawable/bg" android:clipOrientation="horizontal" android:gravity="left" > </clip> android:drawable, in this case bg is the .png or .xml picture to be used for clip drawable. It should be present in your res/drawable folder. Clip orientation horizontal and gravity left ar