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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-19T01:30:55+00:00

Desktop apps have top level menus (File, Edit, Search, …, Help). Web apps have

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Desktop apps have top level menus (File, Edit, Search, …, Help).

Web apps have very similar thing, menu tabs (Logo, Questions, Tags, Users, Badges, …).

However I cannot find equivalent of top level menu in Android framework. Assume that my app has 5 main activities. According to menu design guidelines options menu should contain actions related to current activity. So how an app should allow users to easily switch to one of five main activities.

It seems that different apps solve the problem in different ways. Some have a tab list at the top of the screen, some at the bottom. Even Google applications aren’t consisted in that field. Google Listen has an options menu item called ‘Listen Home’, however Listen main activity has no that options menu item. Others have two icons in app luncher which start two different activities from one app.

I realize that due to small phone screens Android apps have to be designed in a slightly different way than web or desktop apps. But I have a feeling that the app top level menu topic was omitted in Android framework. And developers are on their own here. Or am I missing something?

Update: this is Google blueprint for a great app

Update2: this an example app of these patterns

Update3: GreenDroid library helps a lot implementing these patters in your apps. It seems that dashboard and action bar patterns are becoming quite popular.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You should take a look at this Google I/O session: http://www.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/android-ui-design-patterns.html

    They talk about the design patterns they used for the Twitter application and basically the type of concept you are asking about. Basically, your activity should have a top bar that gives the user specific tasks to do in the view or allows them to switch into another activity.

    Google has not implemented anything like this into the actual SDK yet so you’re sort of on your own in terms of implementing it but the main concept is given in the presentation. This is the direction that Google would like to see Android shift into though.

    Hopefully this helps you out somewhat.

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