Why shouldn't I use the menu icons provided by the OS?

Question

I would like to use some of the default menu icons provided by the Android OS.

The XML would be something like this:

<item android:id="@+id/menu_refresh"
   android:icon="@android:drawable/ic_menu_refresh"
   android:title="@string/menu_refresh" />

But the documentation says this is unadvised.

Warning: Because these resources can change between platform versions, you should not reference these icons using the Android platform resource IDs (i.e. menu icons under android.R.drawable).

I thought the whole point of using the default icons is because the design does change from OS to OS. By using the default icons, your app will look and feel appropriate for the OS it's running on. So what is so bad about using the default icons? It seems like not using the default icons would hurt the appearance of the app.

Answer 1

The problem is that you are adding in a dependency that google does not guarantee will be static.
The names of these icons could change, the size could change and become incompatible with your app.
If you want icons to be the same as the current google ones, you can use the ones available here