I am building a toolbar menu with a SearchView, an action view item, and other regular items.
I want the search icon to be always visible, so I use app:showAsAction="always".
I also had to use collapseActionView, otherwise the search view would take the full width of the tool bar and push the other items, which is ugly.

Here is the complete XML of the menu:

<menu xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item
        android:id="@+id/search"
        android:icon="@drawable/search"
        android:title="@string/search"
        app:actionViewClass="androidx.appcompat.widget.SearchView"
        app:showAsAction="always|collapseActionView" />
    <item
        android:id="@+id/action"
        android:icon="@drawable/edit_24"
        android:title="@string/action"
        app:showAsAction="ifRoom" />
    <item
        android:id="@+id/item1"
        android:checkable="true"
        android:title="@string/item1" />
    <item
        android:icon="@drawable/item2"
        android:title="@string/item2" />
</menu>

Problem

Initially, everything seems to work fine.
The problem only occurs when I open the menu while the search view is expanded.

First weird thing: the action item is still present as an action, but is also visible in the menu (see image). Then, when I’m done with the search view and I collapse it, the action item disappear from both the toolbar and the menu.

Images:

Before expand

After expand

After expand, menu open

After collapsed

After collapsed, menu open: It seems StackOverflow won’t let me add more than four images. This image would have shown that item “Action” no longer appears in the menu.

Workarounds

Setting app:showAsAction="always" (instead of ifRoom) for @+id/action fixes the problem, but I don’t want to force the action to remain visible when the search view is expanded.

I have also tried to apply the solution of this question. I set an OnActionExpandListener on the search view, and I call actionItem.setShowAsAction(MenuItem.SHOW_AS_ACTION_NEVER) when the search view is expanded, and invalidateOptionsMenu() when it is collapsed. This works, but I still don’t understand what is wrong with the initial approach.