Android 4.3 menu item showAsAction="always" ignored

Issue

I'm using the new v7 appcompat library available starting from Android 4.3 (API level 18).

Regardless of what is specified in showAsAction for a menu item, it's not shown - it always creates the overflow menu icon, and puts even a single menu item under the menu.

Trying to add menu to an activity like this:

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.menu_sizes, menu);
    return true;
}

And here's my menu xml:

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:id="@+id/menu_add_size"
        android:title="@string/menu_add_item"
        android:orderInCategory="10"
        android:showAsAction="always"
        android:icon="@android:drawable/ic_menu_add" />
</menu>

Is it a bug of the new support library v7, or just something wrong with the code? I've been using the similar code with ActionBarSherlock many times before.

Solution

Probably you are missing required namespace:

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      xmlns:[yourapp]="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto">
    <item android:id="@+id/menu_add_size"
        android:title="@string/menu_add_item"
        android:orderInCategory="10"
        [yourapp]:showAsAction="always"
        android:icon="@android:drawable/ic_menu_add" />
</menu>

Replace [yourapp] with your app name or any namespace your heart desires everywhere.

Other things worth checking:

• See if your activity class extends ActionBarActivity

Check if the issue persists.

---

Android reference documentation: Adding Action Buttons. Here is the relevant text:

If your app is using the Support Library for compatibility on versions as low as Android 2.1, the showAsAction attribute is not available from the android: namespace. Instead this attribute is provided by the Support Library and you must define your own XML namespace and use that namespace as the attribute prefix. (A custom XML namespace should be based on your app name, but it can be any name you want and is only accessible within the scope of the file in which you declare it.)

Answered By - Nikola Despotoski