Android 9 Development Cookbook - Third Edition

Grouping menu items

Another menu feature that Android supports is grouping menu items. Android provides several methods for groups, including the following:

• setGroupVisible(): Show or hide all items
• setGroupEnabled(): Enable or disable all items
• setGroupCheckable(): Set the checkable behavior

Android will keep all grouped items with showAsAction="ifRoom" together. This means all items in the group with showAsAction="ifRoom" will be in the action bar or all items will be in the overflow.

To create a group, add the <item> menu elements to a <group> element. Here is an example using the menu XML from this recipe with two additional items in a group:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" ...