Not styleable?

[nikclayton]

With a UI component like this I was expecting it to be styleable. That feels more "Android-y" than calling DSL functions, or having to wrap them up in a function that returns a balloon according to my UI's style.

But that doesn't seem to be possible. Am I missing something?

[faraz152]

You're not missing anything — Balloon intentionally does not support Android's XML @style / Theme.attr system. The library's design choice is a programmatic DSL/Builder, not a styleable View.

The idiomatic replacement for "styling" in Balloon is to create a reusable builder function that encapsulates your app's visual language. This is the pattern the docs and samples use:

Reusable style function

// Define once, reuse everywhere — this is your "Balloon style"
fun Context.createAppTooltipBuilder(): Balloon.Builder =
    Balloon.Builder(this)
        .setArrowOrientationRules(ArrowOrientationRules.ALIGN_ANCHOR)
        .setArrowPositionRules(ArrowPositionRules.ALIGN_ANCHOR)
        .setWidth(BalloonSizeSpec.WRAP)
        .setHeight(BalloonSizeSpec.WRAP)
        .setPadding(12)
        .setMarginHorizontal(16)
        .setCornerRadius(8f)
        .setBackgroundColorResource(R.color.tooltip_background)
        .setTextColorResource(R.color.tooltip_text)
        .setTextSize(14f)
        .setBalloonAnimation(BalloonAnimation.FADE)
        // ... anything else that's global to your style

// Usage
val balloon = requireContext().createAppTooltipBuilder()
    .setText("Specific tooltip text for this spot")
    .build()

In Compose, use rememberBalloonBuilder with a common defaults lambda

// Shared defaults
val styleDefaults: BalloonBuilder.() -> Unit = {
    setBackgroundColor(MaterialTheme.colorScheme.secondary)
    setCornerRadius(8f)
    setPadding(12)
    setBalloonAnimation(BalloonAnimation.OVERSHOOT)
}

// Per-screen usage
val builder = rememberBalloonBuilder {
    styleDefaults()                          // apply shared style
    setText("This specific screen's tip")   // override/extend
}

Why not XML styles?

Balloon renders as a PopupWindow with its own inflated layout, not as a View subclass in the normal hierarchy — so the standard defStyleAttr / obtainStyledAttributes mechanism doesn't apply. The tradeoff is that you get full programmatic control (including dynamic colors from Material You / MaterialTheme) without needing to declare XML attrs.

If XML-driven theming is important for your project, the closest path is wrapping the builder defaults in a custom BalloonFactory or BalloonProvider interface (which Balloon also supports natively).