Adding a Badge on Overflow Menu icon - Android

Question

Is there any easy way of adding a simple badge/dot on the Overflow Menu (three-dot menu) icon on the Toolbar?

I'm trying to show the user that there is a new menu item inside. Note that I should be able to add/remove this programmatically. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

You can use simple BadgeDrawable:

val badgeDrawable = BadgeDrawable.create(context).apply {
  // configure (set background color, offsets, etc) 
}

and add/remove it later:

BadgeUtils.attachBadgeDrawable(badgeDrawable, toolbar, menuItemId)

or

BadgeUtils.detachBadgeDrawable(badgeDrawable, toolbar, menuItemId)

Answer 2

First, customize the overflow button style in styles.xml:

<!-- Application theme. -->
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.MaterialComponents.Light">
    <!-- Your theme customization... -->
    <item name="android:actionOverflowButtonStyle">@style/MyActionOverflowButtonStyle</item>
</style>

<!-- Here you choose the ID of the overflow icon. -->
<item type="id" name="myActionOverflowButtonID"/>

<!-- Style to replace action bar overflow icon. -->
<style name="MyActionOverflowButtonStyle" parent="Widget.AppCompat.ActionButton.Overflow">
    <item name="android:id">@id/myActionOverflowButtonID</item>
</style>

(inspired by How to change three dots button on android to other button, but with android:id instead of android:src in the style)

Then, add a badge:

// Get the button view
val view = findViewById<View>(R.id.myActionOverflowButtonID)
// Create and customize a badge, e.g:
val badgeDrawable = BadgeDrawable.create(context).apply {
    backgroundColor = getColor(R.color.primary)
    horizontalOffset = 30
    verticalOffset = 30
    number = 2
}
// Attach the badge to the button
// For this API, you need to update Material components dependency to 1.3.0 or later
BadgeUtils.attachBadgeDrawable(badgeDrawable, view)