How To show icons in Overflow menu in ActionBar

Question

I know it's not possible using the native API. Is there a workaround to implement that kind of view?

Answer 1

The previously posted answer is OK, generally speaking. But it basically removes the default behaviour of the Overflow menu. Things like how many icons can be displayed on different screen-sizes and then they dropped off into the overflow menu when they can't be displayed. By doing the above you remove a lot of important functionality.

A better method would be to tell the overflow menu to display the icons directly. You can do this by adding the following code to your Activity.

@Override public boolean onMenuOpened(int featureId, Menu menu) {     if(featureId == Window.FEATURE_ACTION_BAR && 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(NoSuchMethodException e){                 Log.e(TAG, "onMenuOpened", e);             }             catch(Exception e){                 throw new RuntimeException(e);             }         }     }     return super.onMenuOpened(featureId, menu); } 

Answer 2

In your menu xml, use the following syntax to nest menu, you will start getting the menu with icons

<item     android:id="@+id/empty"     android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_overflow"     android:orderInCategory="101"     android:showAsAction="always">     <menu>         <item             android:id="@+id/action_show_ir_list"             android:icon="@drawable/ic_menu_friendslist"             android:showAsAction="always|withText"             android:title="List"/>     </menu> </item>