Action overflow button for legacy apps
If you’ve already developed an app to support Android 2.3 and lower, then you might have noticed that when it runs on a device without a hardware Menu button (such as a Honeycomb tablet or Galaxy Nexus), the system adds the action overflow button beside the system navigation.

This is a compatibility behavior for legacy apps designed to ensure that apps built to expect a Menu button remain functional. However, this button doesn’t provide an ideal user experience. In fact, in apps that don’t use an options menu anyway, this action overflow button does nothing and creates user confusion. So you should update your legacy apps to remove the action overflow from the navigation bar when running on Android 3.0+ and begin using the action bar if necessary. You can do so all while remaining backward compatible with the devices your apps currently support.
If your app runs on a device without a dedicated Menu button, the system decides whether to add the action overflow to the navigation bar based on which API levels you declare to support in the <uses-sdk>
manifest element. The logic boils down to:
-
If you set either minSdkVersion
or targetSdkVersion
to 11 or higher, the system will not add the legacy overflow button.
-
Otherwise, the system will add the legacy overflow button when running on Android 3.0 or higher.
-
The only exception is that if you set minSdkVersion
to 10 or lower, set targetSdkVersion
to 11, 12, or 13, and you do not use ActionBar, the system will add the legacy overflow button when running your app on a handset with Android 4.0 or higher.
That exception might be a bit confusing, but it’s based on the belief that if you designed your app to support pre-Honeycomb handsets and Honeycomb tablets, it probably expects handset devices to include a Menu button (but it supports tablets that don’t have one).
So, to ensure that the overflow action button never appears beside the system navigation, you should set thetargetSdkVersion
to 14. (You can leave minSdkVersion
at something much lower to continue supporting older devices.)
http://android-developers.blogspot.kr/2012/01/say-goodbye-to-menu-button.html