Android sdk 5.0 - material, has a new property called elevation for views. Elevation gives z value for views. So views with higher elevation will cast a shadow. Elevation can be set using xml android:elevation ="somevalue" Or using code viewname.setElevation(5); Let us look at how a textview uses elevation property. <TextView android:layout_width= "wrap_content" android:layout_height= "wrap_content" android:background= "#a3c6fa " android:elevation= "5dp" android:text= "Hello World!" /> We are setting elevation of the textview to 5dp. We are setting light blue background color for textview. Now our hello world textview looks like this. Pretty simple. Isn't it? Not quite so. Because elevation property needs sdk 21 or higher. You can not tell user to buy a new phone, just so that views will have a shadow. Can you? The solution for older ...