Toolbar and Contextual ActionBar with AppCompat-v7

Update:

Solution: use the windowActionModeOverlay property. Set this in your theme:

<item name="windowActionModeOverlay">true</item>

and the actionmode will be shown over the action bar instead of pushing it down. (If you're not using the latest AppCompat then you need to add the "android:" prefix to the property). It basically lets AppCompat know that you have a toolbar located in the top of the screen and that it should draw the ActionMode on top of it.

Old answer/workaround:

I ran into the same problem. No matter what theme I set, it always pushes down the Toolbar I set as ActionBar. I tried with and without the support library, but it didn't matter.

Unfortunately I was not able to fix it so I have built a workaround instead. In my ActionModeCallback's onCreateActionMode I hide the action bar:

actionBarToolbar.setVisibility(View.GONE);

and in onDestroyActionModeI show it again:

actionBarToolbar.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);

The hiding/showing happens so quickly it is not noticeable on my test devices. There is of course a downside: although the enter-animation still works, the exit-animation of the contextual action bar gets lost because the Toolbar immediately pops over it. But until we come across a better solution I guess we are stuck with this.

(My Activity is actually extending a custom BaseActivity class which has a method called getActionBarToolbar(), taken from the Google I/O 2014 app source code, so I can easily get fetch the Toolbar:

BaseActivity activity = (BaseActivity) getActivity();
activity.getActionBarToolbar().setVisibility(View.GONE);

Too bad the I/O app does not use the contextual action bar.)

Do not start it on your activity, but on your toolbar. In you activity:

Toolbar toolbar = (Toolbar) findViewById(R.id.toolbar);
toolbar.startActionMode(mActionModeCallback)

and you have to use

<item name="windowActionModeOverlay">true</item>

Just a small addition: For

<item name="windowActionModeOverlay">true</item>

In my case, <item name="windowActionModeOverlay">true</item>did not work, but this work:<item name="android:windowActionModeOverlay">true</item>,the android is the key.

Jacob's solution worked for me but the contextual ActionBar was transparent and the Toolbar visible through it. This can be resolved as follows:

<style name="AppTheme.Base" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light">
    ....
    ....
    <item name="actionModeStyle">@style/CustomActionMode</item>
</style>

<style name="CustomActionMode" parent="@style/Widget.AppCompat.ActionMode">
    <item name="background">@color/primary_material_light</item>
</style>

The theme "AppTheme.Base" must be the one applied to the Toolbar.

More details regarding contextual ActionBar styling:

how to Customize the Contextual Action Bar using appCompat in material design