Can I change the Android startActivity() transition animation?

If you always want to the same transition animation for the activity

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    overridePendingTransition(android.R.anim.fade_in, android.R.anim.fade_out);

@Override
protected void onPause() {
    super.onPause();
    if (isFinishing()) {
        overridePendingTransition(android.R.anim.fade_in, android.R.anim.fade_out);
    }
}

I wanted to use the styles.xml solution, but it did not work for me with activities. Turns out that instead of using android:windowEnterAnimation and android:windowExitAnimation, I need to use the activity animations like this:

<style name="ActivityAnimation.Vertical" parent="">
    <item name="android:activityOpenEnterAnimation">@anim/enter_from_bottom</item>
    <item name="android:activityOpenExitAnimation">@anim/exit_to_bottom</item>
    <item name="android:activityCloseEnterAnimation">@anim/enter_from_bottom</item>
    <item name="android:activityCloseExitAnimation">@anim/exit_to_bottom</item>
    <item name="android:windowEnterAnimation">@anim/enter_from_bottom</item>
    <item name="android:windowExitAnimation">@anim/exit_to_bottom</item>
</style>

Which I then reference in my theme:

<style name="AppTheme">
    ...
    <item name="android:windowAnimationStyle">@style/ActivityAnimation.Vertical</item>
    ...
</style>

Also, for some reason this only worked from Android 8 and above. I added the following code to my BaseActivity, to fix it for the API levels below:

override fun finish() {
    super.finish()
    setAnimationsFix()
}

/**
 * The activityCloseExitAnimation and activityCloseEnterAnimation properties do not work correctly when applied from the theme.
 * So in this fix, we retrieve them from the theme, and apply them.
 * @suppress Incorrect warning: https://stackoverflow.com/a/36263900/1395437
 */
@SuppressLint("ResourceType")
private fun setAnimationsFix() {
    // Retrieve the animations set in the theme applied to this activity in the manifest..
    var activityStyle = theme.obtainStyledAttributes(intArrayOf(android.R.attr.windowAnimationStyle))
    val windowAnimationStyleResId = activityStyle.getResourceId(0, 0)
    activityStyle.recycle()
    // Now retrieve the resource ids of the actual animations used in the animation style pointed to by
    // the window animation resource id.
    activityStyle = theme.obtainStyledAttributes(windowAnimationStyleResId, intArrayOf(android.R.attr.activityCloseEnterAnimation, android.R.attr.activityCloseExitAnimation))
    val activityCloseEnterAnimation = activityStyle.getResourceId(0, 0)
    val activityCloseExitAnimation = activityStyle.getResourceId(1, 0)
    activityStyle.recycle()
    overridePendingTransition(activityCloseEnterAnimation, activityCloseExitAnimation);
}

 // CREATE anim 

 // CREATE animation,animation2  xml // animation like fade out 

  Intent myIntent1 = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), Attend.class);
  Bundle bndlanimation1 =  ActivityOptions.makeCustomAnimation(getApplicationContext(), 
  R.anim.animation, R.anim.animation2).toBundle();
  startActivity(myIntent1, bndlanimation1);

Most of the answers are pretty correct, but some of them are deprecated such as when using R.anim.hold and some of them are just elaboratig the process.

So, you can use:

startActivity(intent);
overridePendingTransition(android.R.anim.fade_in, android.R.anim.fade_out);