Android : Options Menu not showing up

I am new to Android programming and wanted to try implementing an options menu in an Android app, so I first created a test app and tried to create an options menu there. I wrote the code and everything looked fine, no error and executed in the AVD but when the app opened the options menu was no where to be found.

I saw a couple of tutorials, went through a lot of Stack Overflow threads for the same problem implemented those changes still no luck - still no options menu.

The MainActivity.java file is :

package com.example.test;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.view.MenuItem;
import android.widget.Toast;
import androidx.annotation.NonNull;
import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.options_menu, menu);
        return true;
    }
}

activity_main.xml :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:padding="16dp">

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/text_view"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="@string/options_menu_example"
        android:textSize="24sp"
        android:layout_centerInParent="true" />

</RelativeLayout>

options_menu.xml :

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto">
    <item
        android:id="@+id/menu_option_1"
        android:title="Option 1"
       />
    <item
        android:id="@+id/menu_option_2"
        android:title="Option 2"/>
</menu>

App Screenshot after executing the above code (using a PIXEL 3 AVD with API 34):

(https://i.sstatic.net/9ZFAi.png)

I would greatly appreciate any help in solving this issue and finding what's wrong with the code so I could note that and not make the same mistake again. Thank you

I checked if all the files where in the right place like if the options_menu.xml file is in the menu directory in res , if there are any typos and a whole lot of small things that could be causing the problem, but everything looked fine still couldn't see the options menu in the app.

For a menu to actually show up, you need to have a toolbar in your activity, and your activity doesn't have one

There are two possible reasons for this

1. Your Activity theme doesn't have a title bar, because it may have a theme of this fashion

<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.**NoActionBar**">

So you could use an activity theme which already has a toolbar

OR

2. You don't have a toolbar in your layout, which is really clear from your code snippet

The toolbar xml could be something like so

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<androidx.appcompat.widget.Toolbar
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:minHeight="?attr/actionBarSize"
android:background="?attr/colorPrimary"
android:elevation="4dp"
android:theme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Dark.ActionBar"
app:popupTheme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light">
</androidx.appcompat.widget.Toolbar>

and then you could add it to your activity

Toolbar toolbar = (Toolbar) findViewById(R.id.toolbar);
setSupportActionBar(toolbar);

Referencing this answer for some detailed idea