Is it possible to change the overflow icon in the action bar? I have blue icons for all ActionBar items and I also want to change the overflow icon when it appears.


You can with a style, but you have to add it to the main Theme declaration.

<resources>
    <!-- Base application theme. -->
    <style name="Your.Theme" parent="@android:style/Theme.Holo">
        <!-- Pointer to Overflow style ***MUST*** go here or it will not work -->
        <item name="android:actionOverflowButtonStyle">@style/OverFlow</item>
    </style>

    <!-- Styles -->
    <style name="OverFlow" parent="@android:style/Widget.Holo.ActionButton.Overflow">
        <item name="android:src">@drawable/ic_action_overflow</item>
    </style>

</resources>

You also can change it dynamically, which I go into detail about here:

Changing the Android Overflow menu icon programmatically


For those who can't get it to work try this WITHOUT the "android:" namespace.

<item name="actionOverflowButtonStyle">@style/OverFlow</item>

  1. Change your custom overflow icon of Actionbar in styles.xml.

     <resources>
        <!-- Base application theme. -->
        <style name=“MyTheme" parent="@android:style/Theme.Holo">
           <!-- Pointer to Overflow style DONT forget! -->
           <item name="android:actionOverflowButtonStyle">@style/MyOverFlow</item>
        </style>
    
        <!-- Styles -->
        <style name="MyOverFlow" parent="@android:style/Widget.Holo.ActionButton.Overflow">
            <item name="android:src">@drawable/ic_your_action_overflow</item>
        </style>
     </resources>
    
  2. Put custom theme "MyTheme" in application tag of AndroidManifest.xml

    <application
        android:name="com.example.android.MainApp"
        android:theme="@style/AppTheme">
    </application>
    

Have fun.@.@


No matter what I tried to do in styles.xml, none of the solutions worked for me. In the end, if you have AppCompat 23+, which you should, this is the easiest way that actually works:

toolbar.setOverflowIcon(drawable);

@adneal's answer is correct (so this is just a community wiki explanation to expand on it).

One of the comments suggested that there may be misunderstanding how to do this, so my answer is just another example on how to override the Overflow icon image.

Code below is based on the template styles from the ADT sample New Android Project. The code comes from the styles.xml file in res/values folder.


<style name="AppBaseTheme" parent="android:Theme.Light">
    <!--
        Theme customizations available in newer API levels can go in
        res/values-vXX/styles.xml, while customizations related to
        backward-compatibility can go here.

    -->
</style>

<!-- Application theme. -->
<style name="AppTheme" parent="AppBaseTheme">

    <!-- All customizations that are NOT specific to a particular API-level can go here. -->
    <item name="android:actionOverflowButtonStyle">@style/OverflowMenuButton</item>
</style>

<style name="OverflowMenuButton" parent="@android:style/Widget.Holo.ActionButton.Overflow">
    <item name="android:src">@drawable/ic_menu_moreoverflow</item>
</style>

What this above code does is replace the default overflow icon with whatever drawable you have that is named ic_menu_moreoverflow. If you want a quick way to test it out, use your app's launcher icon filename, which will make it obvious how it works.

A useful resource to use when trying to understand ActionBar styling, is:

  • Android Action Bar Style Generator

There you can define specific colours to use for your Overflow icon, and the ZIP file will include the correct styles.xml file for you.