Customizing appbar "toolbar" in android

[l-o-u-i-s-g]

Q1: Can the Overflow Menu with the about item be removed?
I tried with: self.main_window.toolbar.clear() but that doesn't work.

Q2: Is there a way to position a command at the far left, before the app name on the toolbar?
Typically this is where the "drawer" button would be or a back button to return to previous screen.

Q3: It there a way to change the content of the label that displays the app name?
When navigating between different screen it is useful to change this label to represent the current screen being displayed.

[freakboy3742]

Re 1. The toolbar can't currently be removed; see #1870. We have a prototype implementation of this as part of #2244. We expect to be landing this over the next month or so.

Re 2 and 3. At present, no to both. Both these essentially fall into the bigger feature request #785. This has been on my personal wish list for a long time, but I can't currently make any guarantees about when it will be implemented. What I can say is that #2244 should make implementing a navigation controller much easier, as that involves some low level changes to app structure that will be useful to implementing navigation.

[freakboy3742]

It uses overflow because there's no way to know how many menu items there will be; we use the "overflow" item as a catch all "root" menu from which we can hang all other menu items. This single top-level menu also supports submenus; if you put commands into Groups, each group appears as a submenu under the top level menu.

Could this be optimised? Quite possibly. I agree if you've only got 2-3 top-level menus, it might be nice to have those options displayed at the top level, rather than a single "generic" overflow menu. We're open to suggestions for other presentations of menus.

And yes, you can add other menu items - any command registered with the app should manifest as an item in the menu.

[l-o-u-i-s-g]

I would have the same 2 distinctions between menu's (commands) and toolbar as there are on the desktop and I would make them both optional.

1 - I would have on the left of the label a drawer represented by the 3 bars icon. This would contain all the menu items ( conmmands ) . The gmail app is a good example of this or you can see an example in flutter docs here: https://docs.flutter.dev/cookbook/design/drawer

2 - On the right of the label I would keep the toolbar and only show an overflow if more then 3 items are added to the toolbar.

[freakboy3742]

We deliberately don't make a distinction between "types" of commands. In an app with good UX design, the menu contains all commands that are accessible to the user, and the toolbar is a subset of those commands that are useful to have a shortcut present. It isn't desirable to have a command that is only accessible via a toolbar; and as a result, Toga doesn't support that configuration.

As for the implementation - I agree that a side-drawer would be a useful UI element to add. However, it's less clear that it's an obvious match for hosting commands, as it is used as a navigation mechanism (Material3 design literally calls this widget a "NavigationDrawer"), not for exposing commands.

[l-o-u-i-s-g]

getting a bit confused with that since on the desktop app there is an extra Menu with preferences and quit. Also for example I create a group called things, define a command "action0" with group things then on desktop you get a "thing" menu. with the action0 inside of if but on android I simply get action0 directly on the toolbar.

I agree with the side-drawer being more of a navigation mechanism, that would be perfect. But I wouldn't duplicate its content on the toolbar that would get too "busy" and hiding a duplicate inside the overflow would be redundant and confusing.

[freakboy3742]

Yes - the Android implementation is making a few shortcuts, and not surfacing the top level menu names. If you put a submenu in the "Things" menu, you it should appear as a submenu.