Icons are not visible in navigation drawer

Question

enter image description here While designing the main navigation for an app, the icons are not visible. The tint is black default and is not getting changed.

Here is my code

<include
    android:id="@+id/app_bar_main"
    layout="@layout/app_bar_main"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent" />

<com.google.android.material.navigation.NavigationView
    android:id="@+id/nav_view"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:layout_gravity="start"
    android:fitsSystemWindows="true"
    app:headerLayout="@layout/nav_header_main"
    android:background="@drawable/side_nav_bar"
    app:menu="@menu/activity_main_drawer" />
</androidx.drawerlayout.widget.DrawerLayout>

When I code like this the icons are visible

<include
   android:id="@+id/app_bar_main"
   layout="@layout/app_bar_main"
   android:layout_width="match_parent"
   android:layout_height="match_parent" />

<com.google.android.material.navigation.NavigationView
   android:id="@+id/nav_view"
   android:layout_width="wrap_content"
   android:layout_height="match_parent"
   android:layout_gravity="start"
   android:fitsSystemWindows="true"
   app:headerLayout="@layout/nav_header_main"
   android:background="@drawable/side_nav_bar"
   app:itemIconTint=""
   app:menu="@menu/activity_main_drawer" />

Answer 1

Menus do not support coloured images

You can not use a coloured image in these places and a bit more also:

1. In bottom navigation
2. In navigation drawer
3. In popup menu
4. etc...

Basically which ever view uses a menu file for its resource, cannot have a coloured image. That is why you don't see it. To test it yourself, take a colourful image in your drawable and set it as an icon for the navigation drawer. You notice that it comes the same way. This proves it

But, there are also some alternatives.

You can do it this way:

mNavDrawer.setItemIconTintList(null);

or in Kotlin:

mNavDrawer.itemIconTintList = null;