How to change the Text color of Menu item in Android?

Question

One simple line in your theme :)

<item name="android:actionMenuTextColor">@color/your_color</item>

It seems that an

  <item name="android:itemTextAppearance">@style/myCustomMenuTextAppearance</item>

in my theme and

   <style name="myCustomMenuTextAppearance" parent="@android:style/TextAppearance.Widget.IconMenu.Item">
        <item name="android:textColor">@android:color/primary_text_dark</item>
    </style>

in styles.xml change the style of list-items but not menu items.

You can change the color of the MenuItem text easily by using SpannableString instead of String.

@Override
public void onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu, MenuInflater inflater) {
    inflater.inflate(R.menu.your_menu, menu);

    int positionOfMenuItem = 0; // or whatever...
    MenuItem item = menu.getItem(positionOfMenuItem);
    SpannableString s = new SpannableString("My red MenuItem");
    s.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.RED), 0, s.length(), 0);
    item.setTitle(s);
}

If you are using the new Toolbar, with the theme Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar, you can style it in the following way.

 <style name="ToolbarTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar">
    <item name="android:textColorPrimary">@color/my_color1</item>
    <item name="android:textColorSecondary">@color/my_color2</item>
    <item name="android:textColor">@color/my_color3</item>
 </style>`

According to the results I got,
android:textColorPrimary is the text color displaying the name of your activity, which is the primary text of the toolbar.

android:textColorSecondary is the text color for subtitle and more options (3 dot) button. (Yes, it changed its color according to this property!)

android:textColor is the color for all other text including the menu.

Finally set the theme to the Toolbar

<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    app:theme="@style/ToolbarTheme"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:minHeight="?attr/actionBarSize"/>

I went about it programmatically like this:

public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.changeip_card_menu, menu); 
    for(int i = 0; i < menu.size(); i++) {
        MenuItem item = menu.getItem(i);
        SpannableString spanString = new SpannableString(menu.getItem(i).getTitle().toString());
        spanString.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.BLACK), 0,     spanString.length(), 0); //fix the color to white
        item.setTitle(spanString);
    }
    return true;
}

If you are using menu as <android.support.design.widget.NavigationView /> then just add below line in NavigationView :

app:itemTextColor="your color"

Also available colorTint for icon, it will override color for your icon as well. For that you have to add below line:

app:itemIconTint="your color"

Example:

<android.support.design.widget.NavigationView
        android:id="@+id/nav_view"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:layout_gravity="start"

        app:itemTextColor="@color/color_white"
        app:itemIconTint="@color/color_white"

        android:background="@color/colorPrimary"
        android:fitsSystemWindows="true"
        app:headerLayout="@layout/nav_header_main"
        app:menu="@menu/activity_main_drawer"/>

Hope it will help you.