Change the theme of overflow menu during ActionMode ActionBar - actionBarPopupTheme and popupTheme doesn't work

Issue

By referring to Styling ActionMode ActionBar in Android 5.0 Lollipop (with AppCompat) and How to set a custom color for the popup of action items, including of the overflow menu?, I tend to change the overflow menu to light theme (Black text, white background)

I use

<style name="Widget.ActionMode" parent="@style/Widget.AppCompat.ActionMode">
    <!-- RED COLOR -->
    <item name="background">@drawable/dummy</item>

    <!-- Hope to get light theme overflow menu. But doesn't work. -->
    <item name="actionBarPopupTheme">@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light</item>
    <item name="popupTheme">@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light</item>
    <item name="android:actionBarPopupTheme">@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light</item>
    <item name="android:popupTheme">@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light</item>
</style>

But, I'm still getting a dark theme menu.

Any idea what went wrong? Note, changing the background of ActionMode ActionBar to red works well.

---

Extra info

My app theme is Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar, with <item name="windowActionModeOverlay">true</item>, so that when I startSupportActionMode, the ActionMode ActionBar will cover the Toolbar.

The following is the style used by my app.

<!-- Base application theme. -->
<style name="Theme.Noteplus.Base.Brown" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar">

    <!-- Custom action mode style -->
    <item name="actionModeStyle">@style/Widget.ActionMode</item>

    <!-- For action mode -->
    <item name="windowActionModeOverlay">true</item>

For displaying ActionMode ActionBar, I'm using this technique - Display ActionMode over Toolbar

Solution

I changed from

<!-- Base application theme. -->
<style name="Theme.Noteplus.Base.Brown" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar">

    <item name="actionModeStyle">@style/Widget.ActionMode</item>

    <item name="windowActionBar">false</item>
    <item name="windowNoTitle">true</item>

to

<!-- Base application theme. -->
<style name="Theme.Noteplus.Base.Brown" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">

    <item name="actionModeStyle">@style/Widget.ActionMode</item>

    <item name="windowActionBar">false</item>
    <item name="windowNoTitle">true</item>

solve the problem. (Not exactly sure the reason behind)

Answered By - Cheok Yan Cheng