Show Menu item always in support action bar

Question

I am working on android application . I have implemented supported action bar in it .I

Answer 1

If you use the AppCompat ActionBar, you have to change your layout in this way:

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" >
    <item
        android:id="@+id/action_settings"
        android:icon="@drawable/add_post"
        android:title="@string/action_settings"
        app:showAsAction="always" />
</menu>  

showAsAction attribute will work only with a custom prefixe, see the documentation. According to it:

Notice that the showAsAction attribute above uses a custom namespace defined in the tag. This is necessary when using any XML attributes defined by the support library, because these attributes do not exist in the Android framework on older devices.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I realize this question is 2+ years old, but for completeness, if you want to set this in code use the following:

menuItem.setShowAsAction(MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_ALWAYS);

other options are

MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_NEVER
MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_IF_ROOM
MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_ALWAYS
MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_WITH_TEXT
MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_COLLAPSE_ACTION_VIEW

Answer 3

remove this line xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"

use android:showAsAction="always" instead of app:showAsAction="always"

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >

<item
    android:id="@+id/action_refresh"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_refresh"
    android:showAsAction="ifRoom"
    android:title="@string/action_refresh"/>

<item
    android:id="@+id/action_filter"
    android:icon="@drawable/ic_filter"
    android:showAsAction="always"
    android:title="@string/action_filter"/>
</menu>

Answer 4

From docs you should add showAsAction attribute to always or ifRoom

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" >
    <!-- Search, should appear as action button -->
    <item android:id="@+id/action_search"
          android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_search"
          android:title="@string/action_search"
          android:showAsAction="ifRoom" />
    <!-- Settings, should always be in the overflow -->
    <item android:id="@+id/action_settings"
          android:title="@string/action_settings"
          android:showAsAction="never" />
</menu>

Answer 5

You can use the different values of android:showAsAction property in android menu xml file..

to show all time visible menu on actionbar, you should go with android:showAsAction="always"..

You can also use android:showAsAction="ifRoom" but it will show the menu in action bar not always but it will show according to different screen size.

Edited

Ref: Menu items doesn't show up on the actionbar

Try with the below code then..

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" >
    <item
        android:id="@+id/menu_lang"
        app:showAsAction="always" <!-- app:showAsAction="ifRoom" -->
        android:title="@string/menu_lang"
        android:icon="@android:drawable/ic_input_lang"/>
</menu>

Hope it will help you..!!!