Overflow menu entries with icon?

Question

If I click on the "overflow" action bar icon, I only see my menu items as text, but the icon is not displayed! Is this the default behaviour? How can I force showing the icon?

If you look at http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/actionbar.html > "Sharing data" image, it at least seems to be possible to have icons there. But how?

Answer 1

Is this the default behaviour?

Yes.

How can I force showing the icon?

AFAIK, you can't. The icons are used on action bar items (toolbar buttons), and on classic options menus (eg, Android 2.x).

If you look at http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/actionbar.html > "Sharing data" image, it at least seems to be possible to have icons there.

That is not the overflow. That is a ShareActionProvider . You can tell this by reading the page you linked to :

Whenever your app permits sharing of data, such as images or movie clips, use a share action provider in your action bar. The share action provider is designed to speed up sharing by displaying the most recently used sharing service next to a spinner button that contains other sharing options.