The new 'Material Design 3 top app bar' docs says they got rid of the drop shadow. How can I enable it? Setting elevation on Toolbar or AppBar does not work at all.
I had the same situation. I found that:
Docs for Top app bar specs says that the container of the TopAppBar has a role "Surface" and Elevation (on scroll) Level 2.
On the page Color system - Color roles I found information that:
At elevation +2 components with surface color containers receive a primary color overlay with 8% opacity.
So the default style for a TopAppBarLayout uses ?attr/colorSurface as a background color and ?attr/colorPrimary with 8% opacity as an overlay (kind of a scrim effect).
My solution:
Create a style for AppBarLayout and set android:outlineAmbientShadowColor and android:outlineSpotShadowColor to black (as it's a default color for creating shadow). These attributes are set as transparent in Widget.Material3.AppBarLayout.
<style name="Widget.App.AppBarLayout" parent="Widget.Material3.AppBarLayout">
<item name="android:outlineAmbientShadowColor" ns1:ignore="NewApi">@android:color/black</item>
<item name="android:outlineSpotShadowColor" ns1:ignore="NewApi">@android:color/black</item>
</style>
In addition to the above you can add either an android:background attribute with you color or a materialThemeOverlay attribute with setting colorSurface to your color (a background) and colorPrimary to @android:transparent (an overlay). I prefer to add directly android:background because adding materialThemeOverlay can have impact on the child views of your AppBarLayout which.
<style name="Widget.App.AppBarLayout" parent="Widget.Material3.AppBarLayout">
<item name="android:outlineAmbientShadowColor" ns1:ignore="NewApi">@android:color/black</item>
<item name="android:outlineSpotShadowColor" ns1:ignore="NewApi">@android:color/black</item>
<item name="android:background">@color/white</item>
</style>
or
<style name="Widget.App.AppBarLayout" parent="Widget.Material3.AppBarLayout">
<item name="android:outlineAmbientShadowColor" ns1:ignore="NewApi">@android:color/black</item>
<item name="android:outlineSpotShadowColor" ns1:ignore="NewApi">@android:color/black</item>
<item name="materialThemeOverlay">@style/ThemeOverlay.App.DayNight.NoActionBar</item>
</style>
<style name="ThemeOverlay.App.DayNight.NoActionBar" parent="Theme.Material3.DayNight.NoActionBar">
<item name="colorPrimary">@android:color/transparent</item>
<item name="colorSurface">@android:color/white</item>
</style>
Don't forget apply your style to your AppBarLayout or theme.
By the way, a liftOnScroll attribute is set to true in Widget.Material3.AppBarLayout so there's no need for setting it. Everything works with setting only layout_behavior for a scrolling view.