Is it possible to grey out (not just disable) a MenuItem in Android?

Question

There\'s a question for the same functionality on Blackberry, and a few different threads referred to this bug (which has since been closed without resolution as far as I ca

Answer 1

Here's a simple way to do it (using Kotlin):

fun changeMenuItemColour(enabled: Boolean) {
    var menuItem = SpannableString(mCustomToolbar?.menu?.findItem(R.id.some_menu_item)?.title)
    var style = activity?.resources?.getColor(R.color.darkGraphite)!!
    if (enabled) style = activity?.resources?.getColor(R.color.black)!!
    menuItem.setSpan(ForegroundColorSpan(style), 0, menuItem.length, 0)
}

Answer 2

I had the same issue. There are two ways of getting this to work:

1. Put your icons in a StateList so that a different icon will be used on disable

2. What I use now. Change the icon yourself with something like this in onPrepareOptionsMenu():

   public boolean onPrepareOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
       boolean menusEnabled = reachedEndOfSlidehow(); // enable or disable?
       MenuItem item = menu.findItem(R.id.menu_next_slide);
       Drawable resIcon = getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.ic_next_slide);
   
       if (!menusEnabled)
           resIcon.mutate().setColorFilter(Color.GRAY, PorterDuff.Mode.SRC_IN);
   
       item.setEnabled(menusEnabled); // any text will be automatically disabled
       item.setIcon(resIcon);
   }
   

You can call invalidateOptionsMenu() (or from ABS, supportInvalidateOptionsMenu()) to rebuild the menu.

EDIT: Updated solution 2

Source: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/actionbarsherlock/Z8Ic8djq-3o

Answer 3

I found a new way to solve this issue using a drawable selector xml file. You just create a selector with the icon you want to use in your menu item, then you can either change the tint, alpha or both of the bitmap:

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

    <item android:state_enabled="true">
        <bitmap android:src="@drawable/ic_menu_item"
            android:tint="@color/enabled_color"
            android:alpha="@integer/enabled_alpha"/>
    </item>

    <item android:state_enabled="false">
        <bitmap android:src="@drawable/ic_menu_item"
            android:tint="@color/disabled_color"
            android:alpha="@integer/disabled_alpha"/>
    </item>
</selector>

As a side note; I like to set the tint to "?android:attr/textColorPrimary" for enabled state and "?android:attr/textColorHint" for disabled state. This way it will adjust depending on the theme used.

---

Then you can just set the icon in your menu xml file to the selector resource:

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

    <item android:id="@+id/menu_action"
        android:orderInCategory="0"
        android:title="@string/title_menu_action"
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_menu_item_selector"
        app:showAsAction="ifRoom"/>

</menu>

Then when you call item.setEnabled(enabled) the color and/or alpha of the icon will change along with the state!

Answer 4

The way I did it is by using "itemIconTint" in NavigationView, you can also grey out the text by using "itemTextColor"

This is Navigationview:

<android.support.design.widget.NavigationView
    android:id="@+id/nav_view"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:layout_gravity="start"
    app:itemBackground="@color/white"
    android:background="@color/white"
    app:itemTextColor="@color/menu_text_color"
    app:itemIconTint="@color/menu_text_color"
    app:menu="@menu/main_drawer" />

and the "@color/menu_text_color" is a selector:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:state_checked="true" android:color="@color/primaryColor" />
    <item android:state_enabled="false" android:color="@color/disabled_text_color" />
    <item android:color="@color/primaryText" />
</selector>

Finally, if you want to disable a menuitem,

MenuItem item = mNavigationView.getMenu().findItem(R.id.your_menu_item);
item.setEnabled(isEnable);

Done!

Answer 5

Have a look at this link

setEnabled can also be used for MenuItems.

Answer 6

I was having difficulty with this on modern android with MaterialComponents theme. My problem was I had set <item name="actionMenuTextColor">@color/blue</item> in styles.xml and this overrides the text color whether the item is enabled or disabled. The solution is to set a Color state list and not a color directly.

My styles attribute now looks like:

<item name="actionMenuTextColor">@color/menu_color_selector</item>