How to add Back Button on Toolbar in Android [Tutorial]

If you are looking for programmatic ways of adding a back button to the Toolbar of your Android Application Activity then you are at the right place.

Tutorial Prerequisite:

• You may already have created created an Android Application by selecting a default template that displays a ToolBar.

How to add Back Button (Arrow) to Toolbar

1. Open your Activity class file: Example - MainActivity.java
2. Add the below lines just after super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); in the onCreate() method,

   package com.example.myapplication;
   
   import androidx.appcompat.app.ActionBar;
   import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity;
   import androidx.appcompat.widget.Toolbar;
   
   import android.os.Bundle;
   
   /**
    * Example program to display back button
    * on the ToolBar on Android Activity
    * 
    */
   public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
   
       @Override
       protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
           super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
   
           //To have the back button!!
           ActionBar actionBar = getSupportActionBar();
           actionBar.setDisplayHomeAsUpEnabled(true);
   
           setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
       }
   }

3. Now run your App you should see the back arrow button displayed just before the Title.

✌️You would see that when you click on the back arrow button no action happens - that's because we have not written any listen for it - let's do that as well.

    @Override
    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(@NonNull MenuItem item) {
        switch (item.getItemId()) {

            case android.R.id.home:

                Toast.makeText(this,"Back button pressed!",Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
                return true;
        }
        return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    }

As the icon that's displayed is called home - we have overridden the onOptionsItemSelected method and when the home button is clicked we are displaying a toast message just to show that the functionality works. You can do the implementation as per your needs.

Happy coding :)