How to change the Text color of Menu item in Android?

to change menu item text color use below code

<style name="AppToolbar" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar">
<item name="android:itemTextAppearance">@style/menu_item_color</item>
</style>

where

<style name="menu_item_color">
<item name="android:textColor">@color/app_font_color</item>
</style>

I was using Material design and when the toolbar was on a small screen clicking the more options would show a blank white drop down box. To fix this I think added this to the main AppTheme:

<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.MaterialComponents.Light.NoActionBar">
    <item name="android:itemTextAppearance">@style/menuItem</item>
</style>

And then created a style where you set the textColor for the menu items to your desired colour.

<style name="menuItem" parent="Widget.AppCompat.TextView.SpinnerItem">
    <item name="android:textColor">@color/black</item>
</style>

The parent name Widget.AppCompat.TextView.SpinnerItem I don't think that matters too much, it should still work.

Adding this into my styles.xml worked for me

<item name="android:textColorPrimary">?android:attr/textColorPrimaryInverse</item>

If you want to set color for an individual menu item, customizing a toolbar theme is not the right solution. To achieve this, you can make use of android:actionLayout and an action view for the menu item.

First create an XML layout file for the action view. In this example we use a button as an action view:

menu_button.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent">

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/menuButton"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Done"
        android:textColor="?android:attr/colorAccent"
        style="?android:attr/buttonBarButtonStyle"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent" />

</androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout>

In the code snippet above, we use android:textColor="?android:attr/colorAccent" to customize button text color.

Then in your XML layout file for the menu, include app:actionLayout="@layout/menu_button" as shown below:

main_menu.xml

<?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/menuItem"
        android:title=""
        app:actionLayout="@layout/menu_button"
        app:showAsAction="always"/>
</menu>

Last override the onCreateOptionsMenu() method in your activity:

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.main_menu, menu);
    MenuItem item = menu.findItem(R.id.menuItem);
    Button saveButton = item.getActionView().findViewById(R.id.menuButton);
    saveButton.setOnClickListener(view -> {
        // Do something
    });
    return true;
}

...or fragment:

@Override
public void onCreateOptionsMenu(@NonNull Menu menu, @NonNull MenuInflater inflater){
    inflater.inflate(R.menu.main_menu, menu);
    MenuItem item = menu.findItem(R.id.menuItem);
    Button saveButton = item.getActionView().findViewById(R.id.menuButton);
    button.setOnClickListener(view -> {
        // Do something
    });
}

For more details on action views, see the Android developer guide.

My situation was settings text color in the options menu (main app menu showed on menu button press).

Tested in API 16 with appcompat-v7-27.0.2 library, AppCompatActivity for MainActivity and AppCompat theme for the application in AndroidManifest.xml.

styles.xml:

<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
  <item name="actionBarPopupTheme">@style/PopupTheme</item>
</style>

<style name="PopupTheme" parent="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light">
  <item name="android:textColorSecondary">#f00</item>
</style>

Don't know if that textColorSecondary affects other elements but it controls the menu text color.

I searched some examples on the topic but all ready-to-use snippets didn't work.

So I wanted to investigate it with the source code for the appcompat-v7 library (specifically with the res folder of the .aar package).

Though in my case I used Eclipse with exploded .aar dependencies. So I could change the default styles and check the results. Don't know how to explode the libraries to use with Gradle or Android Studio directly. It deserves another thread of investigation.

So my purpose was so find which color in the res/values/values.xml file is used for the menu text (I was almost sure the color was there).

1. I opened that file, then duplicated all colors, put them below the default ones to override them and assigned #f00 value to all of them.
2. Start the app.
3. Many elements had red background or text color. And the menu items too. That was what I needed.
4. Removing my added colors by blocks of 5-10 lines I ended with the secondary_text_default_material_light color item.
5. Searching that name in the files within the res folder (or better within res/colors) I found only one occurrence in the color/abc_secondary_text_material_light.xml file (I used Sublime Text for these operations so it's easier to find thing I need).
6. Back to the values.xml 8 usages were found for the @color/abc_secondary_text_material_light.
7. It was a Light theme so 4 left in 2 themes: Base.ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light and Platform.AppCompat.Light.
8. The first theme was a child of the second one so there were only 2 attributes with that color resource: android:textColorSecondary and android:textColorTertiaryin the Base.ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light.
9. Changing their values directly in the values.xml and running the app I found that the final correct attribute was android:textColorSecondary.
10. Next I needed a theme or another attribute so I could change it in my app's style.xml (because my theme had as the parent the Theme.AppCompat.Light and not the ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light).
11. I searched in the same file for the Base.ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light. It had a child ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light.
12. Searching for the ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light I found its usage in the Base.Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar theme as the actionBarPopupTheme attribute value.
13. My app's theme Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar was a child of the found Base.Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar so I could use that attribute in my styles.xml without problems.
14. As it's seen in the example code above I created a child theme from the mentioned ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light and changed the android:textColorSecondary attribute.

Add textColor as below

<style name="MyTheme.PopupOverlay" parent="ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light">
    <item name="android:textColor">@color/radio_color_gray</item>
</style>

and use it in Toolbar in xml file

<androidx.appcompat.widget.Toolbar
     android:id="@+id/toolbar"
     android:layout_width="match_parent"
     android:layout_height="?attr/actionBarSize"
     app:popupTheme="@style/MyTheme.PopupOverlay" /> 

Simply just go to Values - styles and inside styles and type your color