How to force use of overflow menu on devices with menu button

Question

I\'d like to have all of the menu items that don\'t fit into the ActionBar go into the overflow menu (the one that is reached from the Action Bar not the menu button) ev

Answer 1

I use to workaround it by defining my menu like this (also with ActionBarSherlock icon used in my example):

I admit that this may require manual "overflow-management" in your xml, but I found this solution useful.

You can also force device to use HW button to open the overflow menu, in your activity:

private Menu mainMenu;

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    // TODO: init menu here...
    // then:
    mainMenu=menu;
    return true;
}

@Override
public boolean onKeyUp(int keycode, KeyEvent e) {
    switch(keycode) {
        case KeyEvent.KEYCODE_MENU:
            if (mainMenu !=null) {
                mainMenu.performIdentifierAction(R.id.menu_overflow, 0);
            }
    }

    return super.onKeyUp(keycode, e);
}

:-)