How do I hide a menu item in the actionbar?

Question

I have an action bar with a menuitem. How can I hide/show that menu item?

This is what I'm trying to do:

MenuItem item = (MenuItem) findViewById(R.id.addAction);
item.setVisible(false);
this.invalidateOptionsMenu();

Answer 1

For those using the Appcompat library: If your Activity subclasses ActionBarActivity, you can call supportInvalidateOptionsMenu()

Seen here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/19649877/1562524

Answer 2

This Approach worked for me:

private  Menu thismenu;

if (condition)
{
   if(thismenu != null)
   {
       thismenu.findItem(R.id.menu_save).setVisible(true);
       Toast.makeText(ProfileActivity.this, 
    ""+thismenu.findItem(R.id.menu_save).getTitle(),
                Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
   }else
   {
       thismenu.findItem(R.id.menu_save).setVisible(false);
   }
}

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
   getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.profile_menu, menu);
   thismenu = menu;

   return true;
}

Answer 3

By setting the Visibility of all items in Menu, the appbar menu or overflow menu will be Hide automatically

Example

private Menu menu_change_language;

...

...

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    ...
    ...
    menu_change_language = menu;
    menu_change_language.findItem(R.id.menu_change_language)
           .setVisible(true);

    return super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
}

Before going to other fragment use bellow code:

if(menu_change_language != null){                 
    menu_change_language.findItem(R.id.menu_change_language)
       .setVisible(false);
}

Answer 4

This worked for me from both Activity and Fragment

@Override
public void onPrepareOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    super.onPrepareOptionsMenu(menu);
    if (menu.findItem(R.id.action_messages) != null)
        menu.findItem(R.id.action_messages).setVisible(false);
}

Answer 5

P1r4nh4 answer works fine, I just simplified it using a boolean flag:

public int mState = 0; //at the top of the code
//where you want to trigger the hide action
mState = 1; // to hide or mState = 0; to show
invalidateOptionsMenu(); // now onCreateOptionsMenu(...) is called again
...

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu)
{
    // inflate menu from xml
    MenuInflater inflater = getSupportMenuInflater();
    inflater.inflate(R.menu.settings, menu);

    if (mState == 1) //1 is true, 0 is false
    {
        //hide only option 2
            menu.getItem(2).setVisible(false);
    }
}

Answer 6

Get a MenuItem pointing to such item, call setVisible on it to adjust its visibility and then call invalidateOptionsMenu() on your activity so the ActionBar menu is adjusted accordingly.

Update: A MenuItem is not a regular view that's part of your layout. Its something special, completely different. Your code returns null for item and that's causing the crash. What you need instead is to do:

MenuItem item = menu.findItem(R.id.addAction);

Here is the sequence in which you should call: first call invalidateOptionsMenu() and then inside onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu) obtain a reference to the MenuItem (by calling menu.findItem()) and call setVisible() on it