Overflow not showing up in Action Bar

Question

I have 5-6 items in my Action Bar. When I set ShowAsAction = "never", the items goes into the old styled menu which appears from bottom of the screen while I want the three dot styled icon to appear on Action Bar. Also when I click on it, the menu doesn't appear.

My menu file -

    <menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
<item 
     android:id="@+id/About"
     android:title="About"
     android:orderInCategory="1"
     android:showAsAction="always"/>


<item 
    android:id="@+id/Settings"
    android:title="settings"
    android:orderInCategory="2"
    android:showAsAction="always"/>

<item 
    android:id="@+id/item3"
    android:title="Item3"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
    android:orderInCategory="3"
    android:showAsAction="always"/>
<item 
    android:id="@+id/item4"
    android:title="Item3"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
    android:orderInCategory="4"
    android:showAsAction="always"/>

<item 
    android:id="@+id/item5"
    android:title="Item3"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
    android:orderInCategory="5"
    android:showAsAction="never"/>

<item 
    android:id="@+id/item6"
    android:title="Item3"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
    android:orderInCategory="6"
    android:showAsAction="never"/>

</menu>

Answer 1

If you have a hard menu button on your device then the menu options that don't fit on the ActionBar will be placed on your device's menu button. If you have a newer device without this button then they will be placed in the overflow menu (the 3 vertical dots)

See Creating an Options Menu

I created a custom layout for a custom ActionBar so that I could have the same sort of look and functionality across all devices. You may consider doing the same thing if this is what you want.

Answer 2

Android disabled showing the overflow icon on devices which have physical menu button, for some of you who still want it,here is a solution:

add this function to your activity:

private void forceShowActionBarOverflowMenu() {  
    try {  
        ViewConfiguration config = ViewConfiguration.get(this);  
        Field menuKeyField = ViewConfiguration.class.getDeclaredField("sHasPermanentMenuKey");  
        if (menuKeyField != null) {  
            menuKeyField.setAccessible(true);  
            menuKeyField.setBoolean(config, false);  
        }  
    } catch (Exception e) {  
        e.printStackTrace();  
    }  
}  

and finally you add "forceShowActionBarOverflowMenu();" right after setContentView() in onCreate() in your activity.