How to hide menu elements in Android?

Question

I need to trigger a function on clicking the menu icon, and I don't need to show any items inside the menu. When I tries to avoid all the items inside the menu tag, the whole icon itself gets invisible. So how could I display only the menu icon and hide its sub items?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto">


    <item
        android:id="@+id/action_settings"
        android:orderInCategory="100"
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_menu_camera"
        android:title="Settings"
        app:showAsAction="never" />

      //removing the above item removes the whole menu title icon.
    </menu>

Answer 1

you need to change app:showAsAction="always", as below

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" >

    <item
        android:id="@+id/action_settings"
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_menu_camera"
        android:orderInCategory="100"
        android:title="Settings"
        app:showAsAction="always" />
</menu >

check this https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/menu-resource.html