onCreateOptionsMenu() is called once. onPrepareOptionsMenu() is called every time the menu opens. From the onCreateOptionsMenu() documentation: This is only called once, the first time the options menu is displayed. To update the menu every time it is displayed, see onPrepareOptionsMenu(Menu).
In the latest versions of Android when using the compat library for toolbar, is very common that this happens, in order to get the menu items to display in the toolbar you must do the following: mToolbar = (Toolbar) findViewById(R.id.toolbar); setSupportActionBar(mToolbar); getSupportActionBar().setDisplayShowTitleEnabled(false);
try this, @Override public void onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu, MenuInflater inflater) { inflater.inflate(R.menu.menu_sample, menu); super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu,inflater); } Finally, in onCreateView method, add this line to make the options appear in your Toolbar setHasOptionsMenu(true);