Different colors for each item in listbox of an app designer

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Karthik Vemireddy
Karthik Vemireddy on 5 Jun 2018
Answered: Jasmine Poppick on 17 Mar 2023
Hi,
In my app, i have a list box with multiple items and i would like to display each item in a different color.
The list and the assigned colors have to change dynamically.
Is there a way to do it?
Thanks!
  2 Comments
Paolo
Paolo on 5 Jun 2018
Do you want to change the color of the text/background according to what value is selected, or do you want to have a different color for every element when viewing all the elements from the list?
Karthik Vemireddy
Karthik Vemireddy on 5 Jun 2018
Hi Paolo,
I want to do the latter.
"Have a different color for every element when viewing all the elements from the list"

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Accepted Answer

Jasmine Poppick
Jasmine Poppick on 17 Mar 2023
Starting in R2023a, you can do this in App Designer and with uilistbox by using addStyle.
For example, see https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1636400-change-color-of-each-individual-item-in-a-listbox-using-app-designer#answer_1195435.

More Answers (1)

Paolo
Paolo on 5 Jun 2018
Edited: Paolo on 5 Jun 2018
It is possible to change the color of a uicontrol popup element as explained here. You can specify colors ("red","blue","green") or include a rgb triplet.
An example:
uicntrl = uicontrol(panel,...
'Units','normalized',...
'Style','popup',...
'String',{'<HTML><FONT COLOR="rgb(255,1,255)">v1</HTML>',...
'<HTML><FONT COLOR="blue">v2</HTML>'});
The two elements in the popup dropdown list will have different colors. As you indicated that you wish to do this programmatically, a possible solution is the following:
1. Find element.
You can find the element you are interested in by using the handle to the current figure and determining which child you need. You will need to substitute (x) and its children accordingly to your gcf.
fig = gcf;
fig.Children(x)...String{1}
Alternatively, you can use guidata, adding the uicontrol element directly to the structure which enables you to access said element more easily across multiple functions.
2. Change string value.
fig.Children(x)...String{1} =
<HTML><FONT COLOR="rgb(255,1,255)">v1</HTML>
Let's say the current value is rgb(255,1,255), and you wish to change the rgb triplet to rgb(5,12,25).
You can achieve this by using regexprep as explained by Walter here.
With
n1 = 5;
n2 = 12;
n3 = 25;
The replacement expression:
rep = strcat(num2str(n1),'$1',num2str(n2),'$2',num2str(n3));
Replace rgb triplet with new values:
fig.Children(x)...String{1} = regexprep(fig.Children(x)...String{1}, '\d+(\D+)\d+(\D+)\d+', rep);
The color of the text of the element will then change automatically to the new rgb triplet:
rgb(5,12,25)
  7 Comments
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Paolo
Paolo on 13 Jun 2018
@Karthik
Thank you for letting me know. Perhaps I can include this information in my answer? You can accept it for it to be visible to other users. I believe the proposed solution of doing it with uicontrol elements manually and/or programmatically can still be of interest for other users.
Owen Stadlwieser
Owen Stadlwieser on 8 May 2020
What you can do is insert an app.HTML element link it to an html file and create a list with different colour elements in that html file

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