How does this strange condition happens when show menu item icon in toolbar overflow menu?

Question

I want to show a overflow menu in toolbar(AppCompat-v7:22.1.1), below is my menu_main.xml.

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
tools:context=".MainActivity">
<item
    android:id="@+id/action_search"
    android:title="@string/action_search"
    android:icon="@mipmap/ic_menu_search"
    android:orderInCategory="100"
    android:actionViewClass="android.widget.SearchView"
    app:showAsAction="ifRoom"/>

<item
    android:id="@+id/menu_group_chat"
    android:title="@string/menu_group_chat"
    android:icon="@mipmap/ic_menu_groupchat" />

<item
    android:id="@+id/menu_add_friend"
    android:title="@string/menu_add_friend"
    android:icon="@mipmap/ic_menu_add_friend" />

After running my app, the icon of menu item is not displayed, then I tried this solution, add an override method onMenuOpened() in my Activty(extends from AppCompatActivity),

@Override
public boolean onMenuOpened(int featureId, Menu menu) {
    if(menu!=null){
        if(menu.getClass().getSimpleName().equals("MenuBuilder")){
            try {
                Method m = menu.getClass().getDeclaredMethod(
                        "setOptionalIconsVisible", Boolean.TYPE);
                m.setAccessible(true);
                m.invoke(menu, true);
            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }
    return super.onMenuOpened(featureId, menu);
}

But after running this demo, I find that the icon is still not displayed.

From this reported issue, I know that AppCompatActivity.onMenuOpened is not called any more in 22.x, but it's odd that when I click the hardware menu key in Genymotion, the menu appear at the bottom and with the icon,

after closing the menu, I click the overflow button in the toolbar again, these icons in menu appear,

how strange it is! Why this happens?

Answer 1

For the AppCompactActivity you can put this check on the onPrepareOptionsPanel() instead.

@Override
protected boolean onPrepareOptionsPanel(View view, Menu menu) {
        if (menu != null) {
            if (menu.getClass().getSimpleName().equals("MenuBuilder")) {
                try {
                    Method m = menu.getClass().getDeclaredMethod(
                            "setOptionalIconsVisible", Boolean.TYPE);
                    m.setAccessible(true);
                    m.invoke(menu, true);
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    Log.e(getClass().getSimpleName(), "onMenuOpened...unable to set icons for overflow menu", e);
                }
            }
        }
    return super.onPrepareOptionsPanel(view, menu);
}

Answer 2

this is works for me

  @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.my_menu, menu);

        //this section is the one that allows to visualize the icon
        if(menu instanceof MenuBuilder){
            MenuBuilder m = (MenuBuilder) menu;
            //noinspection RestrictedApi
            m.setOptionalIconsVisible(true);
        }

        return true;
    }